Development: On 5 October school students walked out of the negotiations with the government.
Significance: The five-month dispute between the government led by President Sebastian Piñera, on one side, and school and university students and their teachers on the other, over the shape of education reform, looks as though it will get nastier. Hard-liners on the Right are pushing the government to take a tougher line, arguing that it throw striking students out of school and university and criminalise the demonstrators. The government may be emboldened to take a tougher line by its apparent recovery in the latest opinion poll by Adimark. Almost certainly however, this poll overstates public support for the Piñera administration, which got a bounce in September after a military plane crashed into the sea off the Juan Fernández islands on 3 September, killing 21 people. The defence minister, Andrés Allamand, jumped 20 percentage points in the Adimark poll in a month because of his calm handing of the disaster.
Key points:
• Both school and university students and their teachers began talks with the government at about 5pm yesterday on the tricky issue of whether education should be free. All parties said the session started off badly and quickly deteriorated. At 9pm, the school students flounced out and said that they would not return. The university students and the teachers remained in the session for another 30 minutes before also walking out. The university students will consult their peers at a national assembly, on 8 October, before deciding on their next move.
• Education Minister Felipe Bulnes tried to seize the initiative, First, he admitted that there was little progress but insisted that the government still wanted to talk. Secondly, he argued that it would be dotty to provide free education for everyone who wanted it. President Piñera said on 1 October that Chile could not afford to provide free education for all and that the idea was peculiar, because the rich, clearly, could afford to pay. Bulnes stressed that the government wanted to focus its support on the poorest students, to encourage more low income students to remain in education. He said that students should rethink their demand for completely free education because it was demonstrably unfair that poor people’s taxes should subsidise a rich child’s education.
• The students argue that a free education system will be more efficient since government money will flow directly to schools and universities rather than involving banks in student financing. The students also argue that the rich should pay more for their education by being taxed more heavily.
• The two organisations representing school students, Coordinador Nacional de Estudiantes Secundarios (Cones) and Asamblea Coordinadora de Estudiantes Secundarios (Aces), accused the government of intransigence. Some radical university students want to break off all talks with the government.
• The government has some strong arguments, but so far it has failed to put them across and rally moderates to its side. Bulnes again pointed out that the government will increase education spending by 15% in the 2012 budget, which is three times more than the 5% overall increase in budget expenditure.
• Bulnes also argued that the students’ ‘all-or-nothing’ style of negotiating is not helpful.
Pointer: In the Adimark opinion poll, published on 5 October, President Piñera’s approval rating jumped three percentage points in September to 30%, while his disapproval rating fell five points to 63%. Approval of the government jumped six points to 28%, significantly better than the opposition Concertación alliance, which has an approval rating of just 17% and a massive 71% rejection rate. Defence Minister Allamand’s rating soared 20 points in the month. He has now overtaken Laurence Golborne, the public works minister, as the most popular cabinet ministerm with a 78% approval rating, above Golborne’s 71%.
