The day after

Friends reunited? Michelle Bachelet is congratulated by her electoral opponent and childhood friend Evelyn Matthei on her victory in Sunday’s presidential runoff vote. 

It’s a shame the Chilean runoff election happened to take place on the same day as Nelson Mandela’s funeral. Michelle Bachelet won an easy victory over Evelyn Matthei, with an estimated 62 percent of the vote, and this will mark the first time since Chile’s return to democracy that a president will serve a second term.

Matthei conceded and personally congratulated Bachelet, telling her supporters that her “deepest and honest desire is that things go well for her.”

Now comes the hard part. The BBC’s Gideon Long reports that Chile’s Central Bank is warning that growth might drop to below 4 percent next year, as copper prices extend their recent decline http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25398021.  Bachelet faces high expectations for education reform, but this will be costly and harder to bring off with lower export revenues.

On an entirely different subject, the Santiago Times has an interview with Chilean novelist and culture minister Roberto Ampuero, who recounts his extraordinary odyssey from young Communist Party member during the Allende years, to exile in East Germany and Cuba, to political independent and “liberal in terms of individuals, in terms of limited government, individual freedom and democracy.”http://santiagotimes.cl/qa-novelist-culture-minister-roberto-ampuero/

 

 

Chile’s Sunday vote

Preparations for a rally for Michelle Bachelet in Santiago. Photo by Odette Magnet

It is a first for Latin America: two women facing each other in a presidential runoff. On Sunday Chilean voters go to the polls to select either former president Michelle Bachelet or former senator and labor minister Evelyn Matthei. But despite the historical significance of these childhood friends competing against each other, the election is “a bit of a bore,” according to The Economist, as most Chileans are expecting Bachelet to win. http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2013/12/elections-chile

The Santiago Times has this good summary of both candidates’ positions on issues such as education, tax reform and health care: http://santiagotimes.cl/matthei-vs-bachelet-head-head-deciding-issues/

Bloomberg Business Week observes that with the price of copper, Chile’s chief export, at a three-year low, “Bachelet may be forced to choose between spending an additional $15.1 billion on her social program or balancing the budget by the end of her four-year term.” http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-12-12/bachelet-election-pledges-for-chile-face-hurdle-as-copper-falls

Here’s an interesting column by author and philosophy professor Arturo Fontaine on what Chilean voters really want: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/opinion/what-chiles-voters-want.html?hp&rref=opinion/international&_r=0

The Chilean election aftermath

The scene at a voting site in Santiago’s National Stadium. Photo by Rodrigo Lopez

It ain’t over yet, despite some predictions that former president Michelle Bachelet would win a majority of votes in Sunday’s election.  The final tally gave her 46.67 percent, against Evelyn Matthei’s 25.01 percent, the rest spread among seven other candidates.

Just under 6.7 million Chileans voted, down from 6.9 million in the 2009 presidential election, and while this reflects the fact that voting is no longer obligatory the difference hardly suggests widespread voter apathy or cynicism.

So the air force generals’ daughters will face each other in a runoff election on December 15^th.

Here’s a link to the BBC’s report on the vote: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-24977405

The Christian Science Monitor has this piece on the issues in the election: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2013/1116/Will-Chile-bring-back-former-President-Bachelet

Al Jazeera reports on continuing economic disparities in Chile, the greatest among any country in the 34-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/11/other-side-chile-economic-miracle-201311159282210130.html

And the Santiago Times reports on whether the Chilean Congress and Senate will go along with Bachelet’s proposals: http://santiagotimes.cl/chiles-parliamentary-elections-thorn-bachelets-side/

A Chile news summary

The BBC Spanish language network, noting the 15-year anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet’s detention in London, asks what real effects his arrest had.  According to Amnesty International, the case gave a boost to the principle of universal jurisdiction in human rights cases: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2013/10/131015_chile_pinochet_arresto_vs.shtml

Bloomberg reports that a Pinochet-era business and investment system is being abused by very wealthy Chileans to avoid paying taxes, with only 0.3 percent of taxpayers paying the top rate: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-16/pinochet-era-investment-lure-at-risk-in-chile-election-taxes.html

The Financial Times reports on Chile’s presidential race, where former president Michelle Bachelet leads a field of nine candidates with 44 percent and her opponent Evelyn Matthei with only 12 percent. But the election is likely to go into a second round, as Bachelet seems unlikely to win a clear majority in next month’s voting. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/17c47e14-3266-11e3-91d2-00144feab7de.html#axzz2hvN2YX9M

The Heritage Foundation has an admiring article on Chile’s economic development over the past 25 years: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/10/chiles-path-to-development-key-reforms-to-become-the-first-developed-country-in-latin-america

The Christian Science Monitor reports on President Sebastian Pinera’s visit to the San Jose mine on the third anniversary of the miners’ rescue, an event which marked the high point of his administration. He attended the opening of a museum at the site, attended by 13 of the 33 miners and said the rescue changed the meaning of the “Chilean way.”

“Before, the Chilean way meant something half-baked and improvised. It transformed into doing something with faith, unity, and hope,” he said.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2013/1015/Chile-mine-rescue-3-years-later-Pinera-tries-to-recapture-the-political-magic.

The election, polls and an anniversary

This month will mark 40 years since the military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, and the Chilean magazine Caras has a special edition—which is quickly selling out—to mark this anniversary http://www.caras.cl/. Center-right presidential candidate Evelyn Matthei is on the cover, and inside she tells an interviewer that the tax reforms proposed by her opponent, former president Michele Bachelet “will bury growth and employment.”

A survey released last month by the Centro de Estudios Públicos http://www.cepchile.cl/1_5349/doc/estudio_nacional_de_opinion_publica_julio-agosto_2013.html#.UiYmntIqiSq asked respondents their opinions, favorable or unfavourable, of a list of Chilean politicians and public figures, and Bachelet received the most favorable ratings—64 percent—to Matthei’s 32 percent.  The survey’s authors emphasized that these ratings were not the same thing as political support or voting preferences. There was a separate question asking respondents who they thought would become Chile’s next president, regardless of their own sympathies, and 75 percent predicted it would be Bachelet. Another question asked those polled who they would like to see become president, and Bachelet received 45 percent, Matthei 11 percent.

It should be pointed out that voting is no longer obligatory in Chile, and most respondents (72 percent) said that they would either definitely vote or would likely do so.  But 52 percent indicated they were either not very interested, or definitely uninterested in the election, which is scheduled November 17.  Stay tuned.

The Air Force Generals’ Daughters

Michelle Bachelet, left and Evelyn Matthei are the candidates in this year’s presidential election in Chile

Michelle Bachelet, whose presidency ended in 2010, left office with an extraordinary approval rating of 84 percent, and although Chile’s constitution prohibits a consecutive second term, former presidents are allowed to run again for later terms in office. Last month her center-left political coalition held a primary to pick its candidate, and she won 73 percent of the vote. No surprise there.

Chile’s rightwing coaltion, the Alianza por el Cambio, also held a primary, won by Pablo Longueira. Then, bizarrely, he withdrew from the campaign on health grounds. A spokesman said he was suffering from clinical depression. Longueira is an ultra-conservative leader of the Union Democratica Independiente (UDI) who in his younger days helped organize rock-throwing demonstrations against Senator Edward Kennedy during his visit to Santiago in 1986. CNN-Chile has this report on the incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUkfsbPavMY

After some frantic conferring, the Alianza is now backing another UDI politician, former labor minister Evelyn Matthei. The Buenos Aires Herald has this good column on Chile’s political right by Patricio Navia: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/136716/crisis-mode-in-the-chilean-right-wing

Matthei, an economist, is the daughter of a former air force commander and junta member under the Pinochet regime, and the relationship with Bachelet’s family is a fascinating story in itself. General Fernando Matthei and General Alberto Bachelet were air force officers with a friendship that went back decades. At the time of the 1973 military coup Matthei was air force attaché at the Chilean Embassy in London, while Bachelet had been appointed by President Salvador Allende, a socialist, to direct a food distribution program. Bachelet refused to go along with the coup, was arrested, tortured and died in prison in March 1974 (see earlier post https://notesontheamericas.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/justice-for-an-air-force-general-2/). Michelle Bachelet and her mother were later arrested and taken to the regime’s infamous Villa Grimaldi detention center, then released after a few harrowing weeks and went into exile in East Germany.

Matthei returned to Chile a few months after the coup and in 1978  joined the junta as air force commander when his predecessor was forced out of office after repeatedly clashing with Pinochet over economic policy and a timetable for a return to elected civilian government. Bachelet’s mother contacted this old family friend to inquire whether they could safely return to Chile, and they arrived back in early 1979.

During his years as a junta member Matthei discretely removed Chilean air force personnel from the regime’s murderous security forces, and according to the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation Report on abuses during this period, no air force officials were involved in human rights violations while he was air force commander: http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/resources/collections/truth_commissions/Chile90-Report/Chile90-Report.pdf

General Matthei’s most notable action came during the 1988 plebiscite, in which voters were asked to cast yes or no ballots to extend Pinochet’s presidency for another eight years. The regime delayed releasing the vote count, announcing partial results suggesting Pinochet was ahead. When Matthei and other military commanders were called to a meeting at the presidential palace that night, he approached a group of journalists to say the “no” vote had won, earning him the gratitude of Chile’s democrats and the eternal opprobrium of Pinochet and his supporters. When Michelle Bachelet became president in 2006, he told reporters of his friendship with her father and remembered her as a “little girl, playing in the sand.” She has been heard to address him as “Uncle Fernando.”

So what is Evelyn Matthei like?  In the early 90s she won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, becoming the first legislator in Chilean history to have a baby while in office. She later became a senator, then labor minister under President Sebastián Piñera, and aggressively pursued Chilean employers who exploited undocumented migrant workers from other countries.  When a group of Paraguayan laborers were discovered working in slave-like conditions on an agricultural estate in southern Chile, she brought charges against the landowner and met with the Paraguayan ambassador to apologize for the way citizens of his country had been treated. Her manner is sometimes blunt, and a diplomat in Santiago described Matthei to me as “a tough one.” Despite Bachelet’s huge lead in the polls, Matthei has said the election is winnable, and the two air force generals’ daughters should have an interesting debate indeed.

Over on Foreign Policy’s Transitions blog, a great piece by the Caracas Chronicles’ Juan Nagel on how both Piñera and Bachelet snubbed Venezuelan opposition leader Hernan Capriles during his recent visit to Santiago:

http://transitions.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/07/24/chile_throws_venezuelas_capriles_under_the_bus