Brazil & Southern Cone - February 2013 (ISSN 1741-4431)

The battle for the opposition leftist Concertación primaries is underway ahead of the November 2013 general election. In late January the Partido Cristiana (DC), the largest party in the quadripartite coalition, chose Claudio Orrego, the former mayor of the Santiago municipality of Peñalolén, as its candidate ahead of the 30 June primaries. The main source of speculation as regards the primaries is whether former president, Michele Bachelet (2006-2010), Chile’s most popular political figure, will stand for the other main party in the coalition, the Partido Socialista (PS). Bachelet’s term as UN Under-Secretary-General for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, ends this month.

The contest held by the DC on 19 January, which saw Orrego, a housing minister under former president Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) defeat Senator Ximena Rincón by 59% to 41%, was the first as per the new law of primaries, promulgated by President Sebastián Piñera on 29 November 2012. This was passed as part of efforts to strengthen democracy and increase participation, particularly after the low turnout for the October 2012 municipal elections which saw only 5.5m of the 2012 registered electorate of 13.4m cast their ballots (although electoral roll is artificially high as it includes anomalies such as some 1,000 who were disappeared during the 1970s). Under the 29 November law, parties are free to choose whether the contest is open to all the registered electorate or just party members and DC party president, Senator Ignacio Walker, hailed the participation of more than 56,000 people, both party members and independents as historic. He said the elections would have constituted a success if fewer than half that number of people turned out.

Orrego will compete against José Antonio Gómez, the president of the Partido Radical Socialdemócrata (PRSD) while the PS and the other Concertación member, the Partido por la Democracia (PPD), back Bachelet. Aside from the doubts surrounding Bachelet’s candidacy, another uncertainty is whether the Concertación primaries will include parties from outside the coalition such as the Partido Comunista (PC) and Partido Progresista (PRO) of Marco Enríquez Ominami. The latter’s decision to break with the Concertación in the last presidential vote (which took place in 2009) cost the coalition valuable votes. Most recently, on 26 February, Enríquez Ominami told reporters that he had received no response from the Concertación as regards an invitation to participate in a broad opposition round table, organised by the PRO, to discuss a strategic future programme with the aim of defeating the Right in the election.

Yet, ultimately it is the question of whether Bachelet will run which is dominating the debate given the polls show her by far and away to be the favourite. According to the most recent poll by the Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Contemporánea (CERC), released on 30 January, 42% of respondents said they would “like to see” Bachelet elected president, ahead of Laurence Golborne, the presidential pre-candidate of the right-wing Unión Demócrata Independiente (the senior partner in the ruling Coalición por el Cambio) on 15%. Andrés Allamand, the presidential pre-candidate of the ruling coalition’s centre-right Renovación Nacional (RN) came in third on 5% followed by Enríquez-Ominami on 4%. Cerc surveyed 1,200 people on 10-29 December 2012 with a 3% error margin.

27F back in the limelight

That the Piñera government expects Bachelet to run as the Concertación candidate was suggested in its efforts to once again extract political capital from her handling of the tsunami which followed the devastating 8.8 magnitude earthquake on 27 February 2010. On 6 February, government spokesperson, Cecilia Pérez, called on Bachelet – whom she referred to as the “Concertación candidate” - to publicly apologise and take responsibility for her management of the tsunami which resulted in 156 deaths. Pérez’s call came as the investigative police submitted its second report to the public prosecutor’s office as part of an investigation which centred on the authorities’ failure to alert the population about the tsunami. So far eight people have been charged as a result of the investigation, which formally began in May 2012. These include Bachelet’s former deputy interior minister, Patricio Rosende, and the former director of Chile’s national emergency office (Onemi), Carmen Fernández. Upoon receiving the latest report, Prosecutor Andrés Castellanos said he was not ruling out the possibility of new charges.

While the Piñera government has previously sought to use the investigation politically against Bachelet [RBS-12-05] the latest report, which was leaked by the national daily La Tercera, revealed Bachelet to have changed her stance. Having previously maintained that the interior ministry was exclusively in charge of Chile’s emergency alert system, in her declaration, made on 2 January, Bachelet reportedly acknowledged that as president she exercised the “political mandate” at the time of the emergency. At the same time she noted that although she headed up the committee of emergency operations (CEO), “each authority has its responsibilities”.

Meanwhile Piñera has been accused of manipulating the figures relating to the reconstruction, following the earthquake which left 526 dead, 25 missing and caused damage of US$30bn, equivalent to 18% of GDP. On 27 February, he unveiled the latest progress report in which he boasted that, on average, 87% of reconstruction was complete. This breaks down into 99.9% progress in the area of “connectivity” (infrastructure, roads, telecommunications); 98.5% progress with regards to health (where 118 hospitals were affected); 79% progress in relation to housing (where 370,000 homes were affected); 87% progress for education (4,654 schools were seriously damaged) and 75% progress as regards the restoration of public buildings. Yet these claims have been challenged by civil society groups such as the NGO, National Movement for a Just Reconstruction, which points out a press release on the Housing Ministry’s website states that 65% of houses have been completed. This led opposition politicians such as the vice presidents of the DC, Alberto Undurraga and Laura Albornoz as well as PRSD president Gómez to urge the government not to “play” with reconstruction figures.

• Crime down

In January, Chile’s Crime Prevention Undersecretary Cristóbal Lira Lira announced a 9.5% drop in crime over 2012. The biggest falls were in violent robbert (12.7%); homicides (11.8%); damages (13.0%) and rape (9.6%).

• Smoking ban

On 1 March a new law took effect prohibiting smoking in enclosed public areas such as public transport, bars, restaurants and galleries. This follows the final approval of the law by the legislature on 2 January. According to the health ministry, Chile has the highest percentage of adult smokers in the Americas (40.6%) while 16,707 deaths were attributed to smoking in 2010, equivalent to 46 a day.