Sebastián Piñera unsurprisingly won back Chile’s presidency last week, defeating the governing party’s Alejandro Guillier in a runoff.
Piñera last ruled the country from 2010 to 2014 but was constitutionally barred from serving a consecutive second term.
What was surprising was the scale of his victory following a weak performance in the first voting round, where left-wing candidates got a combined 55 percent of the votes. (more…)
Whether change comes swiftly or slowly, a deafness to cries for change can discredit not just politicians or political parties but whole systems of government.
This has already happened in Venezuela. It’s in the process of happening in Brazil. Chile, however slowly, is showing a better way. (more…)
Last month, Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, announced the beginning of the long-awaited process of rewriting the Latin American country’s constitution.
Before her election in 2014, Bachelet campaigned on three issues: tax reform, education reform and, last but certainly not least, the introduction of a new constitution.
Chile made the transition to democracy in 1990 after seventeen long years of military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet. Yet the constitution drafted by Pinochet and his junta in 1980 remained in place.
The legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship was one of extensive executive powers, unforgiving neoliberal reform and the loss of thousands of lives. Although his regime brought significant economic growth, through the privatization of state-owned companies and a liberalization of the overall economy, it came at the expense of wages, benefits and working conditions. Over 40 percent of Chile’s population was living below the poverty line by 1990.
Bachelet’s return to the presidency last year arrived on a wave of optimism with over 50 percent of the votes and a feeling that she would bring long-anticipated changes to address the fact that among developed countries Chile remains the most unequal in the world. (more…)
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…)
Late last month, an agreement was finally reached between Chile and Peru on a maritime border dispute that dated back to 1985. This followed a ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague which gave Peru over 70 percent of the disputed maritime territory. It is hoped that this will usher in a period of reconciliation and signal an end to border disputes in the region. As Peru’s president, Ollanta Humala, said following the ruling, “Peru has closed the book on the border issue.”
The longstanding rift dates back to the late nineteenth century when Bolivia and Peru on one side and Chile on the other fought the War of the Pacific. Bolivia had a coastline at the time that stretched from Antofagasta to Tocopilla, now both in Chile. As Chile was the economically stronger power and had invested heavily in southern Peru’s nitrate industry and Bolivia’s coastal mines, these two countries felt threatened and reacted through nationalizations and increased taxation.
After Bolivia failed to honor its obligations under an 1874 treaty that had seemed to stave off war, Chilean forces assumed control of the coastal areas and advanced on the Peruvian capital, Lima. (more…)
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…)
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 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…)
