Santiago de Chile.- The offer to increase salaries and pensions, reduce the income of parliamentarians, ministers and senior public officials, the reduction in prices of medicines, the freezing of electricity, water and toll rates and a rosary of other patches to cover the malignant tumor of the neoliberal model.
The oligarchy, fearful of losing its privileges, does not want to be dragged by the government's collapse.
Alfonso Swett, president of the powerful Confederation of Production and Commerce (CPC) that rules Chile since 1973, has already raised a white flag to request a truce.
And on behalf of the CPC executive committee, he said: "We have to enlarge our hearts generously. We know that we have to extend our hands and put them in our pocket and that hurts..."
He added that employers will conduct dialogues with their workers to meet their demands both in terms of wages and the indebtedness of their families.
It should be noted that indebtedness is one of the most serious problems affecting Chileans. It represents 73.3 percent of family income. The defaulters exceed four and a half million. A general moratorium and forgiving debts by banks will undoubtedly be the priority of an upcoming government.
If President Piñera, representative of a critical liberal right of state terrorism, would like to alleviate the crisis in the country and facilitate the peaceful transit to democracy with social justice, he should abdicate.
His resignation is one of the main demands made by the people together with the Constituent Assembly.
A provisional government could immediately call a plebiscite to convene a Constituent Assembly, elected by the citizens, to elaborate a democratic Constitution. The ongoing trick to leave the constituent power in the hands of Congress is a slapstick that the country will not support.
However, not everything is sewing and singing. The dying model still has resources to try to demoralize and thwart protests. One of its tricks is to give the conflict long and lead it to exhaustion. The change of cabinet and the battery of concessions obey this strategy.
Another maneuver in development is the psychological war to create fear in vast sectors in the face of fires and looting of criminal gangs that act with police approval.
It seeks to isolate the fundamental core of the movement: workers, retirees and middle classes.
Almost four million workers constitute the active population (42 percent) that together with the middle classes, public servants and domestic servants, reach a majority of almost 70 percent.
But if that enormous force does not remain united and is not endowed with a respected direction, the funeral of neoliberalism could be prolonged. The fight must be understood today as the confrontation of all against the one percent that has looted the country for 30 years.
The strategy of change requires great breadth and social cohesion.
We have a huge task of building social and political strength ahead of us. The space of culture and the arts play a vital role in this reunion with democracy.
We require a cultural revolution to build a different society that respects the essential values of democracy lost in 1973 and that is capable of dimensioning it to the new era of humanity.
The exemplary and wonderful reaction of the people against the abuses and corruption of the system, demands solutions of greater draft. We have never been so close to change that allows us to achieve democracy, equality and justice for so long delayed. (PL)
*Chilean writer and journalist, director of Punto Final.
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