Chile: Presidential and parliamentary elections - full text
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In a run-off presidential election on Jan. 17, Sebastian Pineraof the National Renewal Party (RN), a faction of the centre-right Coalition for Change won, 51.6% of the vote, bringing the right to power in Chile for the first time since the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.
In the first round of voting for the presidency, held on Dec. 13, Pinerawon 44 per cent of the total vote, compared to Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) part of the incumbent Concertación coalition who won 31 per cent of the vote. The failure of any candidate to secure over half the vote prompted a runoff round on Jan. 17. The first round had coincided with elections to Congress (the bicameral legislature), in which the centre-left parties retained control of around half the seats in both houses and the Communist Party (PCCh) secured its first representation in Congress.
Immediate context
The presidential election was triggered by constitutional limits on the term of incumbent president Michelle Bachelet Socialist Party of Chile (PSC)a faction of the Concertación who was constitutionally barred from standing for re-election. Though Bachelet had achieved high popularity ratings, overseeing a period in which social security measures, pensions, and high school education were made available to more underprivileged Chileans, the opposition campaigned on a ticket of modernisation and change. Though Chile's strong exports, primarily copper and wine, had helped the country withstand the global recession, economic growth had slowed substantially in recent years following more than a decade of rapid expansion after the restoration of democracy in 1989. The incumbent centre-left Concertación coalition, their opponents claimed, appeared stagnant and disunited.
Sebastian Pinera, a billionaire businessman listed in Forbes magazine as Chile's third-richest person, had been the pre-poll favourite. Pinera described himself as the closest to the centre of all the right-wing presidential candidates, and promised to bolster the Chilean economy. His chief opponent, Frei ofPDC, became the first representative of the ruling coalition to lose in an election. Frei, a civil engineer by training, had previously served as president from 1994 to 2000, but had at this election failed to capitalize on the popularity of his predecessor Bachelet. Candidates eliminated in the first round included Marco Enriquez-Ominami, an independent candidate formerly associated with Concertación, and Jorge Arrete, who represented the leftist Juntos Podemos coalition.
The parliamentary election, of all 120 seats in the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house) and 18 of the 38 senate seats, gave no coalition an absolute majority. Parties of the centre left retained control of around half of all the seats, and three successful candidates became the Communist Party's first congressional deputies. Also notable among the parliamentary candidates had been Rodrigo Garcia Pinochet, the grandson of the former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Garcia Pinochet's independent candidacy in the Las Condes district of Santiago (the capital) ended in defeat to candidates from the Coalition for Change.
Reaction and outlook
The leaders of two Concertación coalition parties, Pepe Auth of the Party for Democracy (PPD) and the Radical Social Democrat (PRSD) party's Jose Antonio Gomez, had by Dec. 30 resigned over Frei's poor first-round showing.
Following the first round it was speculated that supporters of the eliminated candidates would switch their votes to Frei in the runoff. Since left-wing candidates had received a total of 55 per cent of the first-round vote Frei was in a position to win if he captured the defeated candidates' support.
However, Frei sought to distance himself from the coalition, saying that the low percentage of votes he had secured reflected popular dissatisfaction with Concertación's "old guard" and a desire for the kind of change he claimed he could bring about.
The Chilean stock exchange rose on the announcement of Pinera's first-round lead, and the Bloomberg news agency reported on Dec. 14 that markets were likely to rise further in the event of a Piera victory in the runoff. Alan Garca Prez, president of Chile's neighbour Peru, said on Jan. 3 that he expected relations between the two countries to improve with whoever won the election, after recent tension due to a maritime border dispute.
Historical context
Chile was first reached by Europeans in 1520 and Spanish conquistadors arrived in 1535. They gained control of the northern areas of Chile but were unable to conquer the Mapuche people to the south. Chile was ruled from Santiago (the current capital) as part of the Spanish Empire until it became an independent republic in 1818.
Chile underwent coups in 1924 and 1932 before President Allesandri was elected in October 1932. Both far-left and far-right groups were active in Chilean politics in the 1930s and 1940s with an uprising by "Nazistas" being put down in 1938 and the Communist Party being banned in 1941.
After the Second World War a centre-left government took power and the franchise was extended to women in 1948. After a failed coup plot a right-wing Peronist government was elected in 1952 on a law and order manifesto.
From 1964 Chilean politics again moved to the left with a Christian Democrat winning the presidency in 1964 and Salvador Allende, becoming president in 1970. The socialist economic policies of President Allende led to widespread dissatisfaction among the middle class and in August 1973 a right-wing coup was launched to unseat him. This coup failed but in October a second coup succeeded and President Allende died in the presidential palace.
The ruling junta chose Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte to lead the country in early 1974 against a background of extra-judicial killings and disappearances of dissidents. Pinochet held a referendum on gradual return to civilian rule in 1980 but specified that he should remain in power for a further eight years. The first democratic elections since the coup were held in 1989 and Patricio Aylwin Azócar, a Christian Democrat, replaced Pinochet as president.
After Pinochet left office the human rights violations of his regime were brought into the public domain and prosecution of those responsible began. The centre-left remained in power winning presidential elections in 1994, 2000 and 2006. General Pinochet died of a heart attack in December 2006 having never been successfully prosecuted for human rights abuses.
