Brazil & Southern Cone - March 2009 (ISSN 1741-4431)

The former president (1994-2000) and political heavyweight, Eduardo Frei (of Democracia Cristiana, DC) recently launched his campaign for the ruling Concertación primaries, scheduled for April, where he will face José Antonio Gómez of the Partido Radical Socialdemócrata (PRSD). Frei has the support of three of the four parties comprising the ruling alliance and, with polls indicating that the presidential candidate for the rightwing opposition, Alianza por Chile, Sebastián Piñera, is still the firm favourite, Gómez is under heavy pressure to step aside.

Polls - Separate polls, published in the left-leaning daily La Tercera on 28 February and in the rightwing El Mercurio the following day, showed Piñera leading Frei by 39%-19% and 47.6%-37.7%,respectively. The survey by La Tercera interviewed 686 people in 49 towns while the El Mercurio poll surveyed 800 people in urban areas across the country.

Both surveys came in the wake of  intense campaigning efforts by Piñera across the country last month. While the poll in La Tercera showed the rightwing candidate's backing up from 38% in January, while Frei's dipped from 21%, the survey in El Mercurio suggested a greater increase in support for Frei compared to the previous month (four percentage points compared to 0.6 percentage points for Piñera).

Both polls have fuelled calls from the leaders of the other Concertación parties (in particular the DC, and Partido Socialista [PS]) for Gómez to step aside and leave the presidential nomination to Frei, who kicked off his campaign for the primaries on 28 February in Talca, some 250km south of the country's capital.
The DC and PS complain that the battle for the primaries is consuming valuable energy, which should be directed at defeating Piñera. Gómez has little chance of success in the primaries; in the La Tercera poll 17% said they would vote for Goméz in Concertación primaries compared to 72% for Frei, while only 1% backed him as presidential candidate. The El Mercurio survey showed that only 3% of those questioned would vote for him as president.

Gómez, however, has insisted that he will not step down, billing himself as the more progressive option and insisting on the need for debate. Some consider his insistence on standing an attempt to raise the public profile of the PRSD, the smallest of the Concertación members. Cynics have also suggested that Gómez could step aside if the party is offered enough deputy and senatorial posts during the negotiations over the allocation of legislative candidacy positions among the four parties [RBS-09-02]. Most recently, an agreement was struck on 2 March between the four Concertación members over an addition to the regulations governing the primaries which would appear to signal an end to the controversy over Gómez's refusal to stand down. This amendment states that if the difference between the two candidates amounts to 20 percentage points or more, the frontrunner will immediately be declared the winner and further rounds suspended.
Election issue Frei is nevertheless using his primary campaign for wider political ends, taking the opportunity to publicise his electoral platform and highlight his policy differences with Piñera. He has focused particularly on his proposed measures to tackle the economic crisis, an area in which he differs markedly from his opponent.

During his campaign kickoff in Talca, Frei underlined his belief in the role of the state in addressing the crisis, in contrast to Piñera, who stresses the role of small- and medium-sized businesses. Here, Frei is arguably capitalizing on continued support for the government in its handling of the economic crisis; a survey at the start of February, which gave President Michelle Bachelet her highest approval ratings in two years (53.1%), indicated that 48.4% of respondents approved of her handling of the economy. Both Frei and Piñera are expected to reveal a series of proposals for tackling the crisis over the next few days.

Legislative agenda - With the government in an electoral year, the opposition is grumbling that the Concertación is using the legislative agenda for electoral ends, with complaints directed in particular at a bill to amend the voting system prior to the December contest. These reforms include allowing Chileans living abroad (of which there are just over half a million, mostly in Argentina or the US) to vote (currently a right denied); allowing voluntary voting (voting is mandatory, although registration is not) and automatic registration. The opposition opposes the changes, which would considerably widen popular participation in the electoral process, as they would most likely damage its chances - for example Chilean expatriates include dissidents forced to flee under the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), while automatic registration would incorporate younger voters, more likely to be left-leaning.

The other item on top of the legislative agenda is a bill which requires those seeking public office to place any business interests in a so-called "blind trust", whereby a third party administers the assets while the owner holds public office. The government is proposing that the bill, which was first brought before congress in March 2008, be amended to tighten regulations on politicians with shares in companies that have dealings with the state, or are regulated by the state. This proposed move was decried by the opposition as an attack on the billionaire Piñera, who has a 27% stake in the flagship Chilean airline LAN and control of the television channel Chilevisión, among other interests.

Bachelet visits Cuba 

In what was undoubtedly one of the most publicised events of the year so far, Bachelet visited Cuba  in February, the first visit by a Chilean leader since the leftist Salvador Allende in 1972.   Although the build-up had been fraught with problems over Bachelet's refusal to meet Cuban dissidents [RBS-09-01], once on the island, the trip initially went smoothly. In a concerted effort to endear herself to her hosts, she not only refrained from alluding to human rights abuses allegedly perpetrated by the Cuban government but was also robust in her criticism of US sanctions against Cuba. While she met Cuba's President Raúl Castro, where both signed bilateral cooperation accords on agriculture and livestock, health and biotechnology among other areas, the highlight of her trip was clearly her 90-minute meeting with former leader, Fidel Castro. 

Bachelet's problems escalated upon her return to Santiago however, when hours after their meeting, Fidel penned one of his “Reflections" columns declaring that “Bolivia suffered an extraordinary historic humiliation" when Chile “tore away its coastline" in the 1879 War of the Pacific, a move which deprived it of extensive and very rich copper deposits that constitute the biggest reserve in the world […] bringing the Chilean economy some US$18.45bn a year."     His remarks, which were publicly welcomed by Bolivia's President Evo Morales, caused a political nightmare for the Chilean government. Chile maintains the issue with Bolivia is purely bilateral and the failure of Chile's foreign minister, Alejandro Foxley, to extract a communiqué from the Cuban government stating that Castro was not expressing the official view of the Raúl Castro administration aroused considerable contempt from the opposition and right-wing Unión Democrática Independiente (UDI) in particular.

• Anti-terrorism law In a move unprecedented since taking office in 2006, in February the Bachelet government  invoked the anti-terrorism law against a Mapuche militant, Miguel Angel Tapia Huenulaf. He was charged under the law, inherited from the Pinochet era, for his alleged involvement in the bombing of an office of the public prosecution service last December; and for possession of weapons, explosives and terrorist material. While left-wingers lambasted the move, the government argued it was necessary on the grounds that it was the first time a sufficiently serious threat had been encountered.