Atlantic Sentinel

Author: Gabriela Belmar-Valencia

  • Ending the Permanent Draw: Chile’s Controversial Constitutional Reform

    Last month, Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, signed into law the first major bill that aims to fulfil her electoral promise of constitutional reform. The bill is designed to overhaul the country’s unpopular binomial electoral system, designed in 1984 by Augusto Pinochet’s military regime, to preserve the power of the right wing after Chile’s transition to democracy.

    Chile is currently the only country in the world to use the binomial system, its only other use being Poland’s brief experiment with the process during the 1980s.

    Under the binomial model, two parliamentary seats are available per geographical constituency and seats are won by the two political parties with the highest percentage share of votes. Parties must obtain 33.4 percent of the vote to win one seat and 66.7 percent to win both.

    The practical result is that Chile’s right-wing coalition has consistently retained half of the available congressional seats, despite only ever winning at most a third of the public vote. (more…)

  • Chile’s Bachelet Pushes Ambitious Social Reform Agenda

    Since her inauguration ceremony last month, Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, has announced a series of policies aimed at proving to the public her desire for change.

    Bachelet’s election campaign was based on an ambitious social reform agenda, focused on issues such as gender inequality and social welfare, as well as tax, education and constitutional reform. Her aims are similar to those of her first term in office, between 2006 and 2010, although she acknowledges that her previous government failed to bring about the change it sought. This was particularly the case for education and poverty, issues that led to mass protests and the eventually the downfall of the previous conservative government.

    Bachelet’s first major step on taking office was to announce her “fifty measures in one hundred days,” an impressive list of commitments on issues ranging from education and health care to women’s rights and the environment. Legislation implementing these changes has already swept through Congress, the first bill signed into law creating new March and winter bonuses, aimed at assisting Chile’s poorest families during the toughest periods of Chile’s financial year. (more…)

  • Resignations Cloud Bachelet’s Return to Chile’s Presidency

    Between protest marches and resignations, there has been no discernible honeymoon period for Chile’s new president, Michelle Bachelet. Riding high after her December election, drawing 62 percent of the vote, and  inheriting a thriving economy, Bachelet’s difficult first month has taken both her and the Chilean public by surprise.

    Even before she entered La Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace, Bachelet’s fledgling government was rocked by the student activist movement whose protests helped her defeat Chile’s conservative coalition last year. As far back as January, weeks before Bachelet formally took office, Claudia Peirano, her nominee for education undersecretary, had come under fire. Within 24 hours of her nomination, there were calls from senior members in Bachelet’s own party urging Peirano not to accept the post, due to criticism from Chile’s powerful student movement. (more…)

  • Chile’s Piñera Leaves Presidency with High Growth, Low Ratings

    Chile’s outgoing president, Sebastián Piñera, leaves office this week with the unwelcome distinction of leading the most unpopular government in the Latin American country since the fall of strongman Augusto Pinochet. The first right-wing president since Chile’s transition to democracy, Piñera leaves behind a stable and growing economy, with unemployment at just 6 percent, and a treasury rich with profits from the nation’s lucrative copper industry. So where did it all go wrong?

    The third son of a middle-class family, Piñera rose to become a multibillionaire after stints in academia at Harvard and various Chilean universities. His $2.4 billion fortune is mainly the result of his introduction of credit cards to Chile in the late 1970s, profits he subsequently invested into a number of companies, including LAN Airlines, Chile’s popular Colo-Colo football team and lucrative media enterprises.

    An advocate for compassionate conservatism, throughout his business career, Piñera created a series of charitable organizations, aimed at assisting young women from low-income backgrounds, obtaining justice for the victims of the dictatorship and preserving Chile’s national parks and nature reserves.

    Piñera also took the courageous step of openly declaring that he had voted against Pinochet staying in power in the 1988 plebiscite, refusing to hide behind the secret ballot. (more…)