Development: On 8 October Andrés Chadwick, the cabinet’s ministerial spokesman, committed the government to a tougher line in dealing with the protests by students and teachers against the government’s proposed education reforms.
Significance: Chadwick, a right-winger from the Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI), the dominant party in President Sebastián Piñera’s ruling alliance, is pushing the government into taking a more confrontational line with the protesters. Chadwick argues that the protests are just an excuse for rioting, vandalism and robbery and that its leaders are extremists with a radical political agenda. The protests have gone into their fifth month and, so far, the student leaders have outmanoeuvred the government and retained public support (80% according to two recent opinion polls by Adimark and the Centro de Estudios Públicos). The protesters’ latest stunt was to organise a national plebiscite (held on 9 October) calling for a national, binding referendum on education reform. This would undercut congress as well as being a major setback for the unpopular Piñera government, the first right-wing administration since General Augusto Pinochet’s regime (1973-1990).
Key points:
• Chadwick was dismissive of the referendum, organised by the schoolteachers’ union; however, he did admit that if the turnout were significant, the government would take the results into account. Since over 1.2m people voted, it seems that Chadwick’s requirement was met. Making matters worse for the government, 90% of those who voted in the four-question poll chose to back the teachers’ and students’ proposals for a return to a free, state-funded and state-controlled education system.
• Neither the government nor the protesters have ruled out completely a return to talks, though both sides blame the other for bad faith. The students say that they will only return to the negotiating table when the government “starts to speak our language”. This appears to be a demand for the government to step away, publicly, from the existing policy in favour of for-profit secondary and university education. On 9 October President Piñera called for the school and university students to restart dialogue with the government.
• Both sides are gearing up for another test on 18-19 October, when the students have called a two-day national protest.
• The university students appear to have softened their position slightly. The Confederación de Estudiantes de Chile (Confech), which represents students enrolled in the country’s 30 oldest universities, wants “free education for anyone who needs it”. This is shift from its previous position, which was a demand for free education for all. President Piñera argues that the latter is an unaffordable option and also that it is wrong that poor people, via their taxes, should pay for the education of children from wealthy households.
• The government has now sent three different education proposals to congress: two concern higher education. These included plans to resolve the debts of 110,000 students and to reduce the interest rate on new student loans from 5.6% to 2%. None of these bills have become law.
• The government now plans to send a bill to congress aimed at setting up a new higher education superintendency, along with a new expert committee to advise it on how to reform the system for the allocation of scholarships and loans. The government is also moving away from the current system, under which municipalities run schools and universities, to a more centrally-controlled model.
Pointer: The government does not a have a majority in the 120-seat lower house of congress, where it has 56 seats. In the senate, the ruling alliance (UDI and Piñera’s Renovación Nacional) accounts for 16 of the 38 seats. The students are calling on the opposition to block the government’s bills in congress.
