​The state of the union is… worried.

CHILE - In Brief 09 Jun 2019 by Robert Funk

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When Chilean presidents deliver their annual state of the union speech, they usually list the achievements of the previous year, and announce policies to come. The standard line is, ‘we have achieved much, and there is much left to do’. When President Sebastian Piñera delivered his annual state of the union speech on 1 June, the list seemed unbalanced: much more on the to do list than on the accomplished list. This reveals a problem deeper than just legislative inertia. The government has lost the plot: it’s main selling point – economic recuperation – appears to have vanished. What’s left? The Piñera government came to power under the slogan ‘better times’. Public opinion, exhausted by the frantic and sloppy reformism of the second Bachelet administration, was happy to buy that narrative. Yet in his 1 June speech, the president made no reference to his ‘better times’ slogan. On the contrary, he warned of tough times ahead. None of this, needless to say, is his government’s fault: it’s about the low price of copper, or the US-China trade war, or uncertainty in our own region. Moreover, he faces a stubborn opposition that refuses to approve his policies in congress. According to Ciudadano Inteligente, a policy watchdog, the Piñera government has met 9 of 59 promises made in last year’s state of the union. This may explain why, according to a Cadem poll, in almost every area of public endeavor, from foreign policy to the economy to education (the only exception being immigration), the government’s performance rating is lower than it was a year ago. It is true that Piñera faces a complicated legislative scenario. The government is hoping that people will see that the cong...