CHILE: Attempts to Set Up ‘Military Parties’ Shelved – for Now

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Aug 27 2003 (IPS) - Attempts to create a party in Chile that would bring together the most diehard supporters of Gen. Augusto Pinochet have been shelved for the time being, and the elderly dictator himself has marked his distance from the political aspirations of his followers.

He has given priority instead to meetings with retired officers and former ministers from his 1973-1990 dictatorship, designed to vindicate a regime widely identified with torture, forced disappearances and other human rights abuses.

Sep. 11 will mark the 30th anniversary of the 1973 coup d’etat in which Pinochet overthrew democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende.

Aug. 23 was the 30th anniversary of the day that Allende had to accept the resignation of constitutionalist Gen. Carlos Prats as army chief, and name the second in the chain of command, an obscure, and until-then obsequious, general named Augusto Pinochet.

Just three weeks later, Pinochet seized power in a bloody military coup in which Allende died, and remained de facto president until Mar. 11, 1990, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces until Mar. 10, 1998.

The Pinochet Foundation is busily planning several events to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the ”military rising,” the term used by Pinochet and his followers, who refuse to call the violent overthrow of Allende a ”coup”.

Pinochet again used the phrase ”military rising” when he met recently with his former ministers, who visited him at his country home in Bucalemu, 200 kms south of Santiago, on Aug. 22.

The former de facto leader, who turns 88 in November, repeated a speech he had delivered on Aug. 7 when he made a surprise appearance at a luncheon of retired generals at the Santiago Military Club.

At the luncheon, he urged his former comrades-in-arms to preserve the unity of the army under its current chief, Gen. Luis Emilio Cheyre.

Pinochet’s public appearances have been reduced to a minimum since he was declared mentally unfit to stand trial on grounds of senility by the Supreme Court in July 2002, which let him off the hook with respect to prosecutions for human rights violations.

Nevertheless, he remains an influential political actor among the retired officers and right-wing political leaders who served in the military regime.

Attempts last month to create a party or movement that would identify with the country’s dictatorial past were seen as a challenge to Cheyre, who is seeking to distance the armed forces of today from the dictatorship’s human rights violations.

According to press reports, Cheyre got Pinochet to back him in the face of opposition from the retired generals, and thus apparently weakened the foundations of the creation of new ”military parties”, at least for now.

Retired Gen. Juan Carlos Nielsen, general staff chief for national defence under the last army chief, Ricardo Izurieta (1998-2002), announced the birth of the New National Force (NFN) party, made up of retired officers and civilians identified with the most hard-line faction of Pinochet followers.

But on Jul. 24, the Electoral Service rejected the group’s application to register as a political party, on the grounds that errors were committed in the application procedure.

Nielsen will have to start all over again.

But his wife, Anabella Poblete, another leader of the proposed new ”military party,” said ”We are going to present the application form as many times as necessary. We are prepared to make mistakes until they accept the idea.”

At around the time when the registration of the NFN was turned down, three designated senators who represent the armed forces in Congress said they would push for the revival of the National Unitary Movement (MUNA), which also would be closely identified with the military.

The three senators that are the driving forces behind that initiative are former navy commander Jorge Martínez Busch, former chief of the Carabineros militarised police Gen. Fernando Cordero, and former vice-commander of the army Julio Canessa.

Gen. Ramón Vega, the designated senator representing the air force, is not taking part in the initiative.

The constitution that Pinochet promulgated in 1980 establishes that the Chilean Senate is made up of 38 popularly elected members, as well as nine designated senators, who represent the Supreme Court, former comptrollers, former government ministers, former university deans, and the four branches of the armed forces (including the Carabineros police).

Press reports have indicated that behind the move to create the NFN lie former heads of the dictatorship’s secret police, including Gen. Manuel Contreras, the founder of the notorious National Intelligence Office (DINA), and Major Alvaro Corbalán, former head of operations in the National Information Office, both of whom are currently under arrest in connection with human rights cases.

Corbalán, who has denied that he has ties to Nielsen, headed the creation of the National Advance Party in 1988, which was dissolved after it won just 0.8 percent of the vote in the parliamentary elections of December 1989.

Enrique Correa, a former minister under Christian Democratic president Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994), and one of the architects of Chile’s peaceful transition to democracy, told IPS that ”military parties” have no future in this country.

”We are in a stage in which successful parties in Chile are the ones that represent and reflect a broad diversity of citizen interests, and do not merely express the views of a single group,” said the former minister, who pointed out that retired officers ”are a proportionally small group.”

José Miguel Izquierdo, head of electoral political analysis at the right-wing Freedom Institute, told IPS that a party identified with the military could have an influence on municipal elections in isolated areas where social life revolves around military garrisons.

The next municipal elections, scheduled for October 2004, are seen as a dress rehearsal for the December 2005 presidential elections.

Analysts say it is likely that the NFN and MUNA will formally present candidates in several municipalities in the local elections.

Correa and Izquierdo concur that the political conditions in Chile today will not permit the emergence of retired officers as national leaders, like presidents Hugo Chávez in Venezuela or Lucio Gutiérrez in Ecuador.

”We have a very solid political system, and above all we have strong political leadership on the left, centre and right,” said Correa.

Journalist Juan Andrés Lagos, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which is in the opposition to the ruling centre-left governing coalition, remarked to IPS that the resurgence of ”relics” like parties of military inspiration is a demonstration that ”the main core of Pinochetismo remains latent, is alive, and exercises influence and pressure in favour of its interests.”

Lagos was alluding to the stated aims of MUNA and the NFN to secure ”fair trials based on a state of law” for members of the military charged with human rights abuses, under the ”correct application” of the 1978 amnesty law, which they say is being ”erroneously interpreted” by the courts.

The 1978 amnesty law decreed by Pinochet let human rights violators in the security forces off the hook for all abuses perpetrated up to that time, which included most of the 3,000 disappearances and murders committed under the dictatorship.

In the past few years, some judges have gotten around the amnesty law by labelling forced disappearances as ”kidnappings”, which are not covered by the law.

”The emergence of parties made up of retired military officers is an attempt to press for enforcement of the amnesty law, which has sheltered human rights violators with impunity,” said Lagos.

The armed forces’ concerns about prosecutions of those accused of past human rights abuses seem to have eased somewhat since socialist President Ricardo Lagos announced on Aug. 12 a new proposal for dealing with pending human rights cases.

Under that plan, which must be approved by Congress, soldiers who are deemed to have merely been ”following orders” and who cooperate with the courts would be given more lenient treatment, including commutations of sentences and even immunity.