Piñera is saved from impeachment, but not from the loss of his legacy: Is it the end of his political career?

Sebastian Piñera he escaped impeachment for the second time on Tuesday and got enough encouragement to make it to March and hand over power. But his legacy has been badly damaged.

Sunday is the presidential election in Chile, your candidate does not take off in the polls and his political future is a great unknown, while the suspicions and recriminations towards his management do not stop, despite the fact that his government has been one of the best that administered the vaccination process in the world. But that is far from being enough for Chileans.

READ ALSO: Sebastián Piñera, the president who could not recover from the fierce social crisis in Chile

Pinera, whose approval ranges between 12% and 18%, is the personification of what the Americans call the ‘lame duck’, the lame duck who just waits for the day of the change of command and who rules almost on automatic pilot.

The constitutional accusation, which finally did not prosper, only added one more line to the series of misadventures of his second term. The uncovering of the Pandora Papers Last October, he revealed that the president sold his shares in the Dominga mining project to a tax haven in 2010, shortly after starting his first term, accusations that he categorically rejected but did not prevent the population’s mistrust and social discontent from increasing.

• Impeachment trial against President Sebastián Piñera fails in the Chilean Senate
• How Chile is doing less than a week away from the most crucial presidential elections in its recent history

Survey of the presidential approval in Chile of Plaza Pública Cadem, from October 2021, shows that support for Piñera’s administration stands at 18%.

Chile presidential approval survey. Tuinfluyes.com. November 2021. According to this poll, support for Piñera plummeted to 12%.

Is the political career of the millionaire who became the hope of the Chilean right ended, then?

“Although no one dies in politics, I believe that Piñera’s political career ends in March. Likewise, he can no longer try for the Presidency, but I doubt that he will try a jump to the Senate “Julieta Suárez-Cao, a doctor in Political Sciences, a professor at the Catholic University of Chile and a member of the Network of Political Scientists, comments to this newspaper.

“Piñera’s legacy is almost non-existent, he could have gone down in history as the president who managed a very good vaccination campaign, but after the Pandora Papers, that minimal possibility of having a positive legacy has already disappeared”he adds.

However, the right that wanted to distance itself from the past of Pinochetism now sees how an ultra-right and nostalgic candidate for the dictatorship -José Antonio Kast- is about to reach the second round in the elections this Sunday, taking precisely a significant portion of the votes to the official candidate, Sebastián Sichel, Piñera’s former minister.

SIGHT: Who is José Antonio Kast, the defender of the Pinochet legacy who is very close to the presidency of Chile?

“Piñera wanted to represent a modern, democratic right. I had the intention of definitively closing the transition “Claudia Heiss, academic of Political Sciences at the University of Chile, points out to AFP. But his wish is far from being realized.

October 2019: the before and after

On October 18, 2019, Chile experienced a series of riots that left 34 dead and showed the world the overwhelming inequality of society, despite the fact that Piñera himself boasted that his country was the “oasis” of South America.

The protests jumped from the streets and took over an institutional body when a plebiscite was finally held to draft a new Constitution, which will replace the Magna Carta inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship.

(Photo: Jorge Silva / Reuters / File)

Since the election of the Constituent Convention, the government has been in the background. “Piñera stopped being a valued actor”the Chilean analyst and director of the Tuinfluyes.com agency, Axel Callis, tells the AFP agency. And that undervaluation was further accentuated with the Pandora Papers corruption scandal.

Andrés Jouannet, professor of Political Science at the Catholic University of Chile, had already commented to El Comercio weeks ago that, in reality, Piñera “It has been a long time since he stopped ruling”. “This country is a ship without a captain, with a rudder that moves anywhere and works, fundamentally, because the country still has a certain degree of formality.”.

Although the president was saved from impeachment, it is likely that after he surrenders the command, on March 11, 2022, social organizations will file accusations against him before international organizations for human rights violations during the social unrest of 2019.

Meanwhile, Piñera prefers that the wave pass to continue governing in these five months that remain, while the political tension focuses in the next few days in the decisive electoral process. “The months of government that remain will be similar to these, with a president who appears little and preparing the change of command until the new administration takes over.”Suárez-Cao concludes.

• Chile: presidential candidate Gabriel Boric confirms positive for the Delta variant of the coronavirus
• The largest deportation in Chile: country expels 120 Venezuelan and Colombian migrants
• Chile: a Mapuche group recorded video firing machine guns and demanded that Piñera end the militarization
• What is happening in southern Chile and why does Piñera want to send more soldiers to that region?
• Chile Elections 2021: What impact will the quarantine of the candidates fighting for the presidency have?

.