Chilean Presidential elections are next year, but Daniel Jadue - communist mayor of a 160,000 area in Santiago - is tied with a conservative for 1st place right now according to one recent poll. The race hasn’t really shaped up yet and both leads only have 14%, but that’s still pretty amazing.
This Jacobin interview with Jadue from last year on what a a communist model of local reform looks like is a great read. His stated goal is “to form an open-door state, wherein all that matters are its citizens. The state, quite simply, is its citizens. We are nothing more than humble employees of the citizenry, those who truly constitute the state. Therefore, whenever our citizens come to us with a problem, we do everything in our power to solve it.”
He’s opening Chile’s first public housing; turned local schools into community centers after the end of the school day and plans to teach free university classes out of them; opened a nonprofit public pharmacy in response to a severe lack of healthcare providers (a model now even copied by many conservative areas of Chile); started public programs for vision and dental health; and opened a low-cost public bookstore.
“A socialism that doesn’t govern any better than the Right has no future, nor any right to guide society’s destiny. If socialism wants an opportunity, it will have to be much more democratic, much more effective, and much more efficient. It will have to be more transparent, more innovative, and more transparent than any right-wing government, and more environmentally sustainable.”
