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Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni poses with her ballot at a polling station in Rome.
What We’re Watching: Italian far-right wins big, Russia holds sham votes in Ukraine
Far-right sweeps to power in Italian election
As expected, a three-party coalition led by the far-right won Italy's legislative election on Sunday, paving the way for Giorgia Meloni to become the country's first female PM and most rightwing leader since Benito Mussolini. With almost all ballots counted, Meloni's Brothers of Italy party came in first with over 26% of the vote. Along with Lega and Forza Italia, the coalition she leads will get more than 43% — enough for a majority of seats in both the 400-member lower house of parliament and the 200-member Senate. What happens next? The three parties have about six weeks to form a government captained by Meloni, who's pretty radical on some things but less so on others. She wants to stay in the EU but for Brussels to have less power over Italian affairs. Meloni also backs EU and NATO moves to support Ukraine against Russia (unlike one of her two junior coalition partners, former PM Silvio Berlusconi, a longtime Vladimir Putin pal who seemed to defend Russia's invasion on the eve of the election). Still, Meloni's top priority now is ensuring that Italy gets all the EU pandemic relief cash it needs to weather high inflation and an energy crisis.
Russia pushes to annex occupied regions in sham referenda
Russia keeps moving to formally annex four Ukrainian regions currently under its occupation. On Friday, five days of referenda got underway in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. While the Western media reports that armed soldiers are going door-to-door to collect votes, Russian state media says they’re just around for security. Expected to wrap on Tuesday, the referenda could end up with Russia gobbling up some 15% of Ukraine. Annexations would be in violation of international law. Still, they would also give Russia cover to resist future Ukrainian advances by claiming any assaults as attacks on Russian sovereignty, which could lead to further escalation. Fighting in the region continues, and the Ukrainians claim to have taken out several Russian armor and artillery systems. Kyiv, for its part, has appealed to loyal residents in affected areas to “resist” the plebiscites. Meanwhile, the White House has called the referenda a sham, and the G7 has followed suit. The Brits claim to have evidence that Russia is planning to formalize the annexation by the end of the month.
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Chile wants a new constitution. Here's why.
In a national referendum on Sunday, Chileans overwhelmingly voted in favor of a new constitution. But, why are people in this oasis of political stability and steady economic growth in South America willing to undo the bedrock of the system that has allowed Chile to prosper for so long?
The back story. The current charter dates from forty years ago, when Chile was still ruled by despot General Augusto Pinochet. It was approved in a 1980 national plebiscite which the opposition says was rigged.
Drafted largely by US-educated Chilean neoliberal economists, the Pinochet-era constitution gave a huge role to the private sector in state affairs. Schools, pensions and healthcare were all partially privatized. Chile soon became the most business-friendly South American nation, and its accumulated GDP expanded by an astounding 800 percent from 1990 to 2018.
However, the 1980 charter largely concentrated power in the hands of Santiago's political and business elite, who prospered handsomely while the rest of the country got left behind. Over time, the stark disparity bred strong resentment among working-class Chileans fed up with substandard public healthcare and education, students who can't afford rising tuition fees, the elderly who barely get by on meager public pensions, and indigenous people, who account for 9 percent of the population yet have no cultural or land rights.
The four-cent spark for it all. A year ago, the residents of Santiago took to the streets to reject a $0.04 fare hike for the capital's metro rail system. It was an explosion of anger that caught conservative President Sebastián Piñera by surprise. One of the main demands of the marches — some of which turned violent — was a new constitution.
Piñera, backed into a corner, agreed to hold a referendum, and a year later, three quarters of Chileans voted "yes" to rewriting the country's charter. They also supported electing a constituent assembly in April, which will set to work on a draft that could be ready for popular approval by 2022.
The region is watching. For decades Chile has been an outlier in South America, boasting political stability and steady economic growth in a region long mired in conflict and economic crises. But now that this unequal prosperity has, ultimately, come at a clear political cost, the country's next steps will be closely scrutinized.
Proponents of the referendum envision a new charter that will enshrine more basic rights for all Chileans (especially free higher education and healthcare, as well as affordable housing and transportation), limit the role of the private sector, and expand public welfare to create a more equal society. They argue that while Chile's economy has been cruising for decades, growth has not trickled down to the majority of the people. (In 2018, the income inequality gap between the top and bottom 10 percent was 65 percent higher than the average among the 37 OECD member countries — and that was before COVID-19.)
Although the reforms enjoy widespread support among Chileans, opponents say that implementing a robust social safety net could stifle the country's economic prospects, and open up Chile to the political and economic upheavals that have plagued neighbors like Argentina.
Looking ahead. After decades as a regional model for political stability and economic growth, Chile has discovered it can no longer maintain both. With such high stakes, will the new constitution will help the country's leaders find ways to maintain economic success while ensuring greater equity for the 99 percent, or will this end up being a permanent tradeoff?