What started off as criticism of President Sebastián Piñera for politicising poverty ahead of October’s municipal elections has taken on a whole new dimension over the course of the past week. At stake is something far more important than a short-term political gain: Chile’s institutional integrity.
When Piñera trumpeted his government’s achievements in reducing poverty after the publication of the triennial socio-economic characterisation report (Casen) in July, the leftist opposition Concertaciόn accused him of “seeking popularity at the expense of the poorest” and trying to boost his ruling right-wing coalition ahead of the municipal elections [WR-12-29]. Last week the criticism took on a more sinister form. The Piñera administration was accused of applying pressure on the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac), which worked with the social development ministry (MDS) to produce the Casen, to revise the poverty figure downwards. Two officials involved with the Casen report resigned.
The Casen was published on 20 July. It showed that poverty had fallen from 15.1% in 2009 to 14.4% in 2012. The Piñera administration took some pleasure in goading the Concertaciόn, which had presided over a slight increase in poverty in the previous Casen, by presenting this as a major success. Implicit in its presentation of the report was the suggestion that the Concertaciόn did not have a monopoly on social justice. The result also lent credence to the Piñera administration’s claims that it was meeting its development goals.
The Concertaciόn took exception to what it decried as triumphalism and questioned why the figures were not accompanied with details of the technical data used in the survey and the margin of error (much the same as the apparent decrease). At the time this sounded rather like sour grapes, but after former finance minister Andrés Velasco and a group of 30 economists questioned the methodology employed in the Casen, the online Chilean research and information centre focused on reporting and investigative journalism (Ciper) reported on 31 August that Eclac had presented the MDS with a first report showing poverty of 15%. Eclac apparently revised this down to 14.4% after the MDS suggested that it incorporate another variable to its calculations.
Andrés Hernando, the economist heading the MDS research team working on the Casen, resigned on 31 August. “The night before the announcement [of the figures] … I said that the changes were not significant. I thought then that the communication of the results [by the government] would be reasonable, rather than the hype that they were given.” He told Ciper, however, that “the survey was not manipulated in any way. On that I am emphatic. What was inappropriate was using the results of a key instrument in the design of social policies for political ends.” Juan Carlos Feres, head of the social statistics unit at Eclac in charge of working with the MDS to produce the Casen, also resigned. Feres denied that La Moneda had applied any pressure on him to revise down the poverty figure. Eclac said that it would reconsider its future cooperation with Chile to produce the Casen because of damage to its image.
This appears to have given the Concertaciόn pause. It dropped shrill cries of “the scandalous Casen-Gate”, and calls to establish an investigative commission, amid concern that Chile’s regionally revered institutions could lose their reputation, suffering the same loss of credibility as in Argentina, where official figures bear little relation to reality. The government spokesman, Andrés Chadwick, also promised a political debate over whether there really had been a fall in poverty.
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