By Eduardo Contreras(*) for Prensa Latina
Santiago de Chile, Nov 13 (Prensa Latina) Recent days have seen the manipulation of public opinion by important media outlets in relation to current events in Chile, where the people have said enough is enough and started to demand change.
Journalists themselves have made such complaints, thus demonstrating how mass print and broadcast media distort reality and lie.
For example, revelations were offered by Juan Wilfredo González Mardones, a reporter of TV's Channel 13, as well as the denunciations of journalists of the newspaper La Tercera. All have had the courage to make public the manipulations of reality by these media outlets, even at the risk of their own jobs.
This situation is reminiscent of the coup d'etat of 1973, managed and financed from Washington, where it was not only the Armed Forces and big business that played a role, but also the mass private media.
It is necessary to follow the publications of El Mercurio and La Tercera in their attempt to accommodate reality to the interests of the groups they represent.
With good reason, Faride Zerán, an academic of the University of Chile, in an interesting article for Agenda Popular 2019, noted that pluralism and freedom of expression are an outstanding debt for democracy and not only "because of the alarming concentration of media ownership," but also due to the existence of legal norms that obstruct freedom of expression.
The time has come to analyze the current behavior of all the destabilizing factors, which helps to better understand the risks entailed by the manipulation of the collective consciousness.
The conduct of the Armed Forces and the Police does not constitute any surprise. According to their Prussian, classist formation, officials of all branches of the Armed Forces have not changed their fundamental orientation. Their main enemy is the people and they seem to believe that democracy consists of a government run by the powerful, while they have made great efforts to be exactly that themselves.
We are not referring only to their very exaggerated legal privileges, but also to the illicit acts perpetrated by several of their senior officers, some of them today facing judicial proceedings for various crimes.
Let no one be surprised then by the repression unleashed in Chile over recent days. They do not respect workers, students, professionals, homemakers, trade unions or other social organizations that are protesting against low wages and pensions, high prices and speculation.
A positive aspect has been the attitude of the Chilean judiciary that, unlike during the coup of 1973, instead today has acted in defense of democracy, to the point that it has even expressed its agreement with the call for a Constituent Assembly to draft a new Constitution.
In addition, when the National Security Council (Cosena) was hastily summoned by a disoriented and clumsy Piñera, the president of the Supreme Court had no problem making his opinion public regarding the inadmissibility of that move, coinciding with several others summoned.
At this point no one doubts that the underlying problem, the center of the national debate, is the model of society in Chile, bloodily imposed by the coup leaders of '73, which none of the subsequent democratic governments had the courage to change.
It is the capitalist model, that of private ownership of the means of production, that conceives a State without the resources to meet the needs of society, instead served by businesses that charge dearly.
It is Chile without public education, public health, public social security. The Chile of a State deprived of the use of the country's natural resources, handed over to big business and large transnational economic groups. Copper, lithium, energy, water, roads - all private, all belonging to a few.
Is it only in Chile where the population offers powerful demonstrations of the urgent need to put an end to this historical disgrace? No. The effort to end neoliberalism is today a global trend.
Just one example: Russian newspaper Izvestia on November 6 reported on the study that the Sputnik agency entrusted to the French company I Fop regarding the approval or disapproval ratings of the social economic model in place.
The result of the poll carried out between October 2 and 15 of this year, surveying a thousand people from different social strata in each country regarding the crisis of the current model and their aspirations for another model of society, was the following: in Italy, 80 percent of those polled agreed the current model was in crisis; in France 73%, in Germany 61% and in the UK 58%.
In our case, every day that passes shows the growing awareness of Chileans that the issue is to fundamentally change the current model and establish a new way of life, a new society, setting out its fundamental aspects in the new Constitution.
This new, political Constitution must be radically different from the current one and replace all that was imposed on us by force and maintained with the complacency of politicians more loyal to the big business than to their people.
Is achieving this a simple, risk-free task? Not at all. Our continent is full of examples of progress, but also of setbacks, in the historical struggle between the working, exploited classes and the dominant classes of each country.
The great news of Lula's release in Brazil contrasts with the coup against Evo in Bolivia.
Indeed, the overthrow of President Evo Morales - who changed his peoples' life for the better, achieving historic development and welfare - has been imposed by the bourgeoisie of his country with the complicit silence of the armed institutes.
In general, the armed institutions of the continent, with few exceptions, have been modeled to uphold the unfair model under the watchful eye of the United States administration.
Everything can happen, but the Chilean people have repeatedly shown themselves to be steadfastly committed to assuming this task. And they demonstrate this with their demands for a "New Constitution, Constituent Assembly, Plebiscite Now."
It is also a matter of dignity and patriotism. It is urgent to end inequality and this is an appropriate historical opportunity that should not be wasted. Chile has woken up, stood up, is advancing and somehow, as Neruda warned in his beautiful poem 'The Ship', is demanding that the exploiters of always put an end to the enormous inequities, and do so right now.
Tomorrow could be too late and we may regret it.
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(*)Chilean journalist and prominent jurist
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