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CIAO DATE: 04/03
Chile Alert: Down to the Wire: the Second Round
William Perry *
Hemisphere Focus: 1998-2000
Series VIII, Issue 1
January 11, 2000
Overview
The decisive run-off round of Chile's presidential elections to be held on January 16, 2000, represents the culmination of the most interesting and important campaign season since democratic government returned to that country in 1989. It has been by far the closest, most hard-fought contest during that period. More fundamentally, this race seems to represent the end of the immediate post-transition era-when a set of agreements and understandings observed to facilitate the country's return to democracy governed the practices of Chilean politics. In its wake-whatever the ultimate outcome-maintaining that country's unquestionable record of success will depend upon a new, hopefully self-regulating, ebb-and-flow of political competition much less influenced by the divisions and conventions of the past.
This marathon run has pitted a Socialist Party candidate (backed by the center-left Concertación coalition), Ricardo Lagos, against conservative standard-bearer (from the historically rightist Unión Demócrata Independiente), Joaquín Lavín. Initially, and by past electoral traditions, Lagos appeared to enjoy a substantial, virtually insuperable advantage in this contest. But at a time of significant change in the country's political landscape and with the help of a skillful campaign, Lavín has made a great race of it. These two front-runners finished in a virtual dead heat during the first round of balloting on December 12, 1999-48.0 percent for Lagos versus 47.5 for Lavín, with the remainder scattered among a number of minor party candidates. Under current Chilean electoral law, this lack of a majority by any single contender requires a brief additional period of campaigning as prelude to a decisive showdown between the two leading vote-getters little more than a month later.
Background
All Chilean politics still needs to be seen against the backdrop of Salvador Allende's failed "socialist experiment," which was ended by a military coup on September 11, 1973, and followed by 15 subsequent years of authoritarian government under General-President Augusto Pinochet. Even before that, however, the Chilean electorate had been rather rigidly divided into three more-or-less equal components, the so-called tercios (thirds). On the left, the Socialist and Communist parties represented radical change in an environment heated by the Cold War. The center of the Chilean political spectrum was dominated by the Christian Democrats. Right-of-center opinion traditionally backed the Conservative Party, which, during the Pinochet years, evolved into two separate currents, Renovación Nacional (RN) and the Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI).
The Christian Democrats had guardedly supported Allende's elevation to the presidency, despite the fact that he won only a bare plurality of the vote in the hotly contested elections of 1970 under a previous constitution that allowed congress to decide under such circumstances. That decision was taken largely because it was traditional to so reward the largest vote-getter. But the Christian Democrats came to repent this choice, as Allende radicalized the country and plunged it into economic chaos in an apparent drive for absolute power. Their shift into outright opposition greatly helped to prepare the ground for military intervention, which initially, at least, enjoyed an undoubted majority of civilian support. Pinochet's eventual determination to create a long-lived new authoritarian state caused the Christian Democrats to change course again. They became a key element in the Concertación coalition (along with the left) that successfully pressured the General to hold a national referendum in 1988 on continuation of his rule, which he lost, ushering in a return to democratic political competition the following year.
But, since Pinochet had received an impressive 44 percent in that balloting, his departure from power was most emphatically a negotiated one. Thus, a number of explicit agreements and informal understandings were reached during the transition period that quite strictly governed the political process thereafter. Most fundamentally, the Pinochet-drafted constitution was left in place, and because of a number of less-than fully democratic features (like a contingent of appointed senators and the institutionalization of military influence on the country's National Security Council), it was unlikely to be changed in the foreseeable future. Moreover, Pinochet himself remained in control of the military establishment for an extended period (ultimately until 1998). The armed forces were also guaranteed an agreed-upon share of the nation's copper revenues and were effectively immunized against strong influence on its internal affairs by civilian authorities.
Under these circumstances, the Christian Democrats and the parties of the left chose to stick together in the Concertación coalition during the elections of 1989 and 1993. By norms of traditional political calculus (two "thirds" against one), such an alliance assured that no conservative would prevail in those contests. But this center-left partnership deemed it prudent to offer Christian Democratic standard-bearers, so as not to provoke the military by prospects of a Socialist or Communist president. Thus, Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei won easily and served out their terms successfully, presiding over a dynamic, liberalized economy inherited from the old regime, while only cautiously beginning to discuss prospects of possible future institutional changes with the conservative parties, which predictably opposed them.
The beginnings of change in this modus vivendi have been in evidence, however, over the course of the past few years. Gen. Pinochet's departure from his dominating position in command of the armed forces during early 1998 was a significant development in this respect. Under provisions of the constitution, he immediately graduated to a lifetime senate seat. But, symbolically and with regard to day-to-day leadership of Chile's still important military, it marked the passage of an era. His subsequent detention in the United Kingdom on human rights charges, although causing quite a furor, has even further removed him from the scene in terms of practical politics.
The Campaign: Contenders, Issues, and its Outcomes
That the contest for Chile's presidency this time around would break past molds has been evident since the Concertación coalition nominated Ricardo Lagos as its standard-bearer. A figure of standing in the Socialist Party since the time of Allende, Lagos (at 61 years of age) implacably opposed the Pinochet regime, but represents the subsequent evolution of most of its cadre from a radical past toward comprising one of the pillars of Chile's new democratic establishment. Nevertheless, his choice as a presidential candidate violated one of the fundamental taboos of post-transition political practice. And it also promised to make the current contest more of a race, as Socialist and Communist Party followers would have little choice but to vote for a Christian Democrat against any representative of the right. But traditional adepts of Christian Democracy might well prefer a conservative if a Socialist were offered by Concertación.
This break with the past was compounded by the selection of Joaquín Lavín as his principal opponent. Almost a generation younger than Lagos, Lavín (who is 46 and was a 20-year-old university student at the time of Allende's demise) labored at the middle levels of the Pinochet regime's bureaucracy and became a member of Chile's most staunchly conservative political party. But he really made his name in the 1990s as mayor of Las Condes, an up-scale residential community in Santiago's burgeoning suburbs.
Contrary to any expectations of a fiery left-right confrontation over history and basic principles, this year's campaign has been marked by a quest for votes from the country's very moderate center. Chile's has been a great success story during recent years and few of its citizens would wish to hazard any prospect of return to the dangerous internal contention of the past. Lagos, at base, represents the coalition that has governed the country for a decade as a conventional Western democracy with a strong commitment to the liberal economic legacy of Augusto Pinochet. And he has no reason to raise the specter of his own more radical past.
On the other side of the ledger, Lavín-above all, a practical, activist mayor -knew from the beginning that to win he must break the calculus of two tercios against one by appealing to centrists and new voters. Thus, Lagos has been placed in the role of defending the status quo and minimizing what little he has to say about future political and socioeconomic reform. Lavín, meanwhile, came to emphasize genteelly populistic aspects of his program from a solidly conservative base, making him quite hard to distinguish from his adversary in any policy sense. Even attempts to link him to Pinochet have largely fallen flat, as even the government opposes his detention overseas, and his physical absence allows Lavín to duck the issue more effectively.
Another factor favoring the underdog in this race has been the current state of the economy. A pioneer in the market-oriented reforms that subsequently spread across the region and beyond, Chile experienced one of the most dynamic patterns of growth worldwide over the past 15 years. This was facilitated by an expanding and well-diversified export performance, more-or-less equally distributed among U.S., European, Asian, and Latin American markets. But with both Asia and many regional neighbors in recession-and until recently Western Europe showing little in the way of dynamism-the global contraction of 1998 hurt Chile badly. Thus, 1999 was a year of no growth for Chile's vaunted economy, with predictable consequences in terms of employment and wage levels. These adverse circumstances afflicted many citizens, who naturally tended to blame the incumbent administration and its candidate. Moreover, a process of attrition and voter fatigue is inevitable after a decade of rule by any party or coalition.
Joaquín Lavín has shown great ability to capitalize on these factors in the course of his uphill campaign. Certainly, his is a well-financed effort, as the major source of private contributions in Chile is the local business community of a generally quite conservative caste. And the campaign has been a modern, sophisticated one, employing the kind of polling, scripted events, and media savvy characteristic of American political campaigns. The Lagos bandwagon, by contrast, has seemed somewhat ponderous, stodgy, and uninspired by comparison. Lavín appears in shirtsleeves and associates himself with grassroots activities aimed at problem-solving and concrete, self-help improvement of living standards. (The main claim to fame of his mayorality was implementation of a more effective system of personal and home security in Las Condes-something that goes down well in an ordered society where increasing crime is a matter of serious public concern.)
Lagos, on the other hand, has been disadvantaged by a "suit-and-tie" appearance and set-piece speeches on duller, if more important, national issues. The generational issue is thus made more obvious. And this has clearly had an impact on that key constituency of younger voters, who do not care very much about the broils of the past (in fact, would like to put that whole era of the country's history behind them), and wish to see government merely providing services in exchange for taxes paid.
As a result, Lagos' initial lead has steadily eroded during the course of this campaign. But even Lavín's most fervid supporters must have been pleasantly surprised by trends during the days leading up to the balloting of December 12 and its gratifying outcome for them. They had looked forward to the prospect of forcing a run-off in a field also composed of four minor party candidates. But Lavín's vote total came very near to actually equaling that of his rival-a mere .5 percent short-and encouraging their hopes for victory in the subsequent run-off round.
Second Round Calculations and Implications for the Future
Despite the enthusiasm of Joaquín Lavín's partisans, and the distance he has already traveled, in practice it will be difficult for him to emerge victorious from the decisive balloting of January 16. Much obviously depends upon the 4.5 percent of the voters who supported those candidates eliminated during the first round. And, once again, Ricardo Lagos appears to hold a strong initial advantage. Three of the four minor party entrants were from the left of the political spectrum. Gladys Marín alone-representing a rather unreconstructed faction of the Communist Party-garnered over 75 percent of this total. While she refuses to endorse Lagos because he is "too conservative," it must be supposed that most of her backers who choose to exercise their franchise again on January 16 will favor him over someone with his opponent's antecedents. These facts, combined with his margin of defeat on December 12, put Lavín perhaps 250,000 votes short going into the second round.
It is difficult to see how Lavín will overcome a deficit of this magnitude merely by appealing to the ranks of the some 800,000 Chileans who did not cast ballots the first time around. Despite the most strenuous efforts on both sides, polls in early January confirm this analysis, showing Lavín about 2 percent behind. In the end, a narrow victory by the enduring Ricardo Lagos must be anticipated as the most likely outcome. Only by capitalizing on prior momentum and converting some of those who voted for Lagos in the first round, could Lavín hope to pull off an upset triumph. At this late stage in the process, it is also uncertain how the preliminary indications of a break in Pinochet's legal case—implying his eventual return to Chile—can affect the election outcome.
Another triumph for the Concertación coalition will not greatly affect Chile's political stability or currently healthy prospects for relatively prompt recovery of its economy. As the artificial conservative majority erodes in the Senate (due to deaths and new appointments), pressure will gradually build to address the current constitution's more undemocratic anomalies. And if General Pinochet is returned to Chile, contention might arise over whether he should face charges locally. More fundamentally, the elections of 2000 will bring Chile beyond the strictures of the immediate transition period to an era of more unfettered political competition.
Note *: William Perry is a senior associate of the CSIS Americas Program and president of the Institute for the Study of the Americas and William Perry and Associates. Mr. Perry has an extensive track record of involvement in Colombian, Venezuelan, Argentine, Brazilian, and Southern Cone affairs and the analysis of elections there and in other Latin American countries. He has also served as a senior Latin American specialist for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, director of Latin American affairs at the National Security Council. Back.
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