Sebastian Pinera’s recent election victory in Chile makes him the first right-wing President to hold office since General Pinochet. Does the win represent the beginning of the end for the Latin American left, or does it represent a growing disenchantment with ‘politics as usual’?

Heirs of Pinochet - Roberto Navarrete, Red Pepper

Contrasting Wins - John Cherian, Frontline

12th February 2010

Heirs of Pinochet

8th February 2010 - Roberto Navarrete, Red Pepper

Twenty years after the referendum that ousted the dictator Augusto Pinochet, the result of the first leg of Chile’s presidential elections, held on 13 December 2009, has placed the country’s right within striking distance of being elected to office for the first time in 50 years. The billionaire businessman candidate of the right-wing Coalicion por el Cambio (‘Coalition for Change’), Sebastián Piñera, got 44.1 per cent of the vote, while the former president and candidate for the ruling centre-left coalition Concertación para la Democracia, Eduardo Frei, obtained only 29.6 per cent – a huge drop from the 46 per cent obtained by the same coalition at the last presidential election in 2005.

A large part of the Concertación vote went to Marco Enríquez-Ominami (MEO), who obtained 20.1 per cent. MEO, who resigned from the Concertación and stood as an independent candidate, is a former Socialist Party deputy whose father, Miguel Enríquez, was the leader of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Movement of the Revolutionary Left / MIR). Miguel Enríquez was killed in 1974 fighting against the Pinochet dictatorship and is seen as an iconic figure of the left. The candidate of the Communist-led coalition Juntos Podemos (‘Together We Can’), Jorge Arrate, is a former Socialist Party minister who had left the Concertación. He got 6.2 per cent, a slight increase over the coalition’s results in the previous presidential election.

Whose Defeat, Whose Victory?

While the Concertación’s defeat has been interpreted by many as a defeat for the left and a victory for Chile’s right, a closer look at recent electoral results reveal that this is not necessarily the case. While the right in Chile has maintained a consistently high vote (close to 45 per cent) since the end of Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1989, the 44.1 per cent obtained by Piñera in the December 2009 first round is below what was achieved by the right in the 1989, 1999 and 2005 presidential elections.

More significantly, the results reflect a strong protest vote within the left of the Concertación (represented by MEO) and the extra-parliamentary left (represented by Arrate), which together obtained around 26 per cent of the vote. This reveals a deep dissatisfaction, especially among the younger electorate, with the Concertación’s uncritical continuation of the neoliberal economic model inherited from the dictatorship, and the slow pace of political reform of Pinochet’s 1980 constitution, which ensured the perpetuation of the neoliberal model. There is also widespread disillusionment with the market dominating areas such as education, health, pensions and the utilities. The Concertación did not respond to the electorate’s desire for real change, and compounded this by nominating an uncharismatic former president widely viewed as responsible for deepening the neoliberal reforms inherited from the dictatorship.

During its 20 years in government, the Concertación, has attempted to moderate the harsh social impact of the Pinochet dictatorship, which had transformed Chile from one of the least unequal countries in the continent to one of the most unequal. But it has still continued the dictatorship’s free-market model, centred on exporting primary goods, with mineral (primarily copper) exports accounting for about 60 per cent of Chile’s foreign earnings.

Chile’s mineral wealth had been nationalised in 1972 during Salvador Allende’s government, but Pinochet opened the sector to foreign investment. Codelco, the state-controlled copper mining company, now controls only 30 per cent of copper production in Chile; foreign companies account for most of the rest. In 2006 alone, foreign mining companies earned around US$20 billion, which not only exceeds their gross investment in mining in Chile during the past 30 years but is equal to about 60 per cent of the government’s budget for that year.

During his previous presidential period, Frei and his successors, Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet, signed free trade agreements with the US, the EU and China, which have set Chile’s foreign policy on a diametrically-opposed path to most of its neighbours. This has made it impossible for Chile to participate in the South American Common Market (Mercosur), and other initiatives such as the Bank of the South, which seek economic integration for Latin American countries.

The right’s Coalition for Change alliance represents a political pact between Renovación Nacional (RN), a party representing Chile’s big business interests and Unión Democrática Independiente (UDI), an ideologically conservative party with a significant popular following. The party was created by Pinochet’s main ideologue, Jaime Guzman, who is closely linked to Opus Dei and other ideologically conservative Catholic sects. UDI is the largest party in the country with a large representation in Parliament (40 members, nine senators).

The alliance’s candidate, Sebastian Piñera, formerly a RN senator and one of Chile’s richest people, is the closest the country has to Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi. Piñera’s fortune, estimated by Forbes at more than US$1 billion, was amassed during the Pinochet dictatorship, when his brother and former business partner, Jose Piñera, a labour minister under Pinochet, was the one who reformed the mining law, opening the mineral sector to private investment. Jose Piñera was also responsible for implementing a privatised compulsory pension scheme and a comprehensive liberalisation of labour laws, which set back a long history of gains by the trade union movement in Chile.

Sebastian Piñera’s business group owns stakes in several major Chilean companies in the energy, mining and retail sectors; it has 100 per cent control of Chilevision, a terrestrial TV channel; owns the largest airline in South America, Lan Chile; and owns the country’s most popular football team, Colo-Colo.

Piñera is a declared admirer of Alvaro Uribe’s right-wing government in Colombia and, if elected president in the second round of the Presidential election (underway as Red Pepper went to press), he is likely to align Chile with Colombia and other US allies in the region. This would represent a dangerous trend for the Latin American integration process that is being promoted by the Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) and the countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua.

Political Responsibility of the Left

In addition to the Concertación, the left bears political responsibility for the current situation. The dispersion, confusion and demoralisation of its traditional popular power base can be attributed to a large extent to its inability to generate a wide united front of all the progressive anti-capitalist forces. It has still not recovered from the fragmentation caused by the repressive measures of the dictatorship, which exiled and physically eliminated its best leaders, and the slow insidious action of an electoral system that rewards coalitions and makes it virtually impossible for small parties to obtain parliamentary representation.

In the absence of a popular and democratic alternative to transform Chilean society, a vote for the Concertación represents the ‘lesser evil’. It currently offers the only means to contain the ability of Chile’s oligarchy to administer the one remaining enclave of political power outside their dominion – the government itself. At the time of writing, before the second-leg election result is known, it seems that the only chance of preventing the right’s victory in this and future elections lies in adopting a broad platform of renewal in the Concertación programme. The electoral arithmetics indicate that if Frei were able to attract around 90 per cent of Arrate’s vote and 75 per cent of MEO’s he would stand a chance of winning.

The reform programmes of both MEO and Arrate, representing the left critique of the Concertación, are comprehensive. They includes tax reform; the creation of a state-controlled pension provider; the end of the ‘bi-nominal’ electoral system; the recovery of state control over basic mineral resources (copper, lithium and water); strengthening the public education and health systems; environmental policies focused on people rather than short term profit; and a call for a constituent assembly that will lead to a new constitution to finally put an end to the authoritarian enclaves left by the dictatorship.

However, in the few weeks that have elapsed since its dismal performance in the first ballot, the Concertación has shown little evidence of responding to the discontent among its supporters. It has failed to reform its political leadership, and its discredited undemocratic practices make it uncertain as to whether it will be able to enthuse the protest vote in order to win in the second round.

So as Chileans prepare to vote once again the stage is set. A Piñera victory would mark a new stage in a long process of ideological erosion in Chile – the one that began with the overthrow of Allende’s democratically elected government in 1973 by Pinochet’s brutal US-backed forces. Responsibility for this erosion also lies with the Concertación, who by unquestioningly siding with the neoliberal project has both contributed to making people believe that there are no alternatives to the capitalist system, and destroyed the foundations of humanism and solidarity in parties such as the Socialists – the party of Salvador Allende – that had a long anti-capitalist tradition in Chile.

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Contrasting Wins

February 2010 - John Cherian, Frontline

The December 2009 elections in Bolivia and Chile, which share a contested border, were noted for the electorates’ markedly different positions. The people of Bolivia gave the incumbent President Evo Morales a thumping mandate. The election in Chile was more tightly contested. Though the second round was held only in January, it was clear from the results of the first round that the Centre-Left coalition’s 20-year hold on the government in Chile was coming to an end.

In the first round, Sebastian Pinera, a billionaire businessman, won 44 per cent of the votes. Eduardo Frei, the candidate of the Centre-Left Concertacion coalition, came second with 36 per cent of the votes whereas the independent socialist candidate, Marco Enriquez-Ominami, won 20 per cent. In the final round, 52 per cent of the votes went to Pinera, Chile’s third richest person. The victory will make him the first right-wing President to hold office since the end of General Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship in 1990.

It was clear that many supporters of the independent left-wing candidate voted against “politics as usual”, symbolised by the Centre-Left governments of the last two decades. There was also a high degree of abstention among voters, illustrating the disenchantment of the electorate with the lack of real choices.

Though sections of the Western media have tried to portray the victory of Pinera as a setback for the Left in Latin America, most analysts blame the electoral reverses in Chile on the lacklustre personality of Frei and the anti-incumbency factor. Politics in the country seems to have become personality, not ideology, driven. The current President, Michelle Bachelet, has an approval rating of over 75 per cent but was barred from running again because of constitutional constraints. She is eligible to contest again after four years. Frei could not, however, translate Michelle Bachelet’s popularity into votes in his favour in the second round. Frei, who belongs to the Christian Democratic Party, was himself President in the 1990s.

There was nothing much to distinguish between the economic and political platform of the two opposing candidates. The right-wing candidate ran a slick campaign aided by his riches. The right-wing combination Pinera led was named the “Coalition of Change”, taking a leaf out of the strategy adopted by Barack Obama during his campaign for the United States presidency. Pinera pledged not to make any changes in the economic policies initiated by the Centre-Left or reinstate any politician who had served under the brutal dictatorship of Pinochet.

Like his Centre-Left rival, Pinera also promised to continue with the progressive social programmes initiated by the current Socialist President, including the extension of child care and state assistance to non-working mothers. After winning the elections, one of the first things that Pinera did was to praise Bachelet and seek her advice. As the right-wing parties lack a legislative majority, Pinera may have to include Concertacion candidates in his Cabinet. Otherwise, it will be difficult for the new government to enact legislation. The President-elect, who is to take office in March, has already started talking about forming a government of “national unity”.

Pinera’s elder brother, Jose, was one of the architects of Pinochet’s neoliberal economic policies and had served as Labour Minister under him. The Centre-Left governments that followed Pinochet also retained most of the neoliberal economic programmes of the dictatorship, which led to the “Chilean miracle”. The country’s economy, which registered impressive growth figures throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, has been experiencing negative growth in the past two years. The official unemployment rate is over 10.2 per cent. Pinera’s promise to create a million more jobs during his term seems to have swayed voters.

The contrasting triumph of Evo Morales and his party, the Movement for Socialism (MAS), Bolivia, with more than two-thirds of the votes, is an unequivocal endorsement of the radical policies he ushered in after taking office four years ago.

The right wing, which until last year was threatening to break up the country and was staging violent protests, is in disarray. But the right-wing candidate, Manfred Reyes Villa, a former Governor, got the majority of votes in the key province of Santa Cruz, which is threatening secession.

The MAS is now in total control of both the houses of parliament, having won two-thirds of the seats. The ruling party can now call for referendums for further amendments to the Constitution and will be able to make key judicial appointments.

Morales will now have a much freer hand in implementing his ambitious land reforms programme in the new five-year term. Already 26 million hectares has been redistributed, benefiting 98,454 families. Morales ran for a second term after successfully getting the Constitution amended by a referendum last year. The old Constitution had restricted the term of the President to just one.

The indigenous people, who form the majority of the populace, will be further empowered with the re-election of Morales. Since taking office, he has created quotas in the army and other government services for indigenous people, who have been discriminated against for a long time. His government set up a special school to train diplomats from indigenous backgrounds. Three new universities for indigenous people have also been set up.

The Morales government also achieved the noteworthy feat of eradicating illiteracy with the help of friendly governments such as those in Cuba and Venezuela. It also managed to reduce extreme poverty by 6 per cent while reducing foreign debt from $4.4 billion to $2.4 billion. A notable achievement of Morales as President has been the nationalisation of the country’s hydrocarbon sector. This move improved the government’s revenues substantially. Before nationalisation, gas was sold at $0.6 cents per million thermal units. Today it is sold at $5 per million thermal units.

Many poor households have now got natural gas connections. In the three years since the nationalisation, Bolivia earned $6.413 billion. Much of the windfall profits have been used to improve the public infrastructure of the nine State governments and 327 municipalities.

Morales plans to bring around 40 per cent of the country’s economy under state control. At present around 28 per cent is under the control of the government. The country has huge deposits of lithium but does not have the expertise or the capital to mine it. The metal is used for computer and camera batteries and is in tremendous demand worldwide. Morales said that he was ready to “guarantee” investments to exploit the country’s lithium deposits but warned that Bolivia needed “partners, not patrons”.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez hailed the victory of Morales as a victory for all of Latin America. He described it as a victory for “popular constitutionalism”, which has it roots in Venezuela. Venezuela was the first country that changed the Constitution in the region so that it reflected the aspirations of the common people. The “Bolivarian Constitution” adopted in 1999 started a trend. Ecuador and Bolivia soon followed suit and put in place a popular Constitution approved by referendums. Brazil and Argentina may also do the same in the near future.

As Chavez pointed out, this development is viewed with hostility in Washington and by the privileged classes in Latin America. The President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted when he talked about the possibility of convening a Constituent Assembly. Washington, Chavez has warned on several occasions, is not averse to staging military coups in countries such as Ecuador and Bolivia “to stem the rising tide” of popular governments in the region.

Morales took the oath of office for his second term on January 22. As many as 30,000 people took to the streets of the capital La Paz to celebrate the occasion. “Comrades, democracy has been consolidated – the colonial state has died and the multicultural state has been born,” declared Morales. Among those present on the occasion were Chavez and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa.

In his address to his countrymen, Morales said that he would focus on building an “inclusive Bolivia”, consolidating on the tremendous achievements made during his first term in office.

“When the unions and the social leaders truly represent the people and work for the country, as we are doing in Bolivia, revolution becomes democratic and based on conscience – the time has come out to seek equality, dignity and unity beginning from solidarity among all our peoples,” he said.

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