CHILE-POLITICS: Mid-term Shows Frei Halfway There

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Gustavo Gonzalez

SANTIAGO, Mar 11 1997 (IPS) - Chilean President Eduardo Frei and his centre-left governing coalition, at the half-way mark of his six- year term in office, have made significant progress in consolidating democracy – but face a number of challenges ahead, analysts say.

Frei took over from Patricio Aylwin on Mar. 11, 1994, to head Chile’s second democratically elected government after the 1973-90 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Both Frei and Aylwin are Christian Democrats.

Political analysts view one of Frei’s major achievements thusfar as his success in loosening Pinochet’s tight hold on the armed forces, prior to the ex-dictator’s retirement from his post as army chief exactly one year from now.

The clearest sign of this came just last week in the National Security Council (NSC). Air Force General Fernando Rojas, and the head of the Carabineros police, General Fernando Cordero, failed to support Pinochet’s proposal of two judges to be designated by the NSC to the Constitutional Court. Rojas even went so far as backing Frei’s alternative proposal.

“The uniformed abandoned their uniformity,” noted the daily ‘El Mercurio’ and analysts said the incident marked a promising start to the series of reforms the president aims to push through.

With respect to the renovation of the Constitutional Court, inherited from the dictatorship, the governing coalition also reached accords with right-wing opposition sectors. Political pundits believed the situation looked good for the elimination of designated senators – another legacy from the dictatorship – which both Aylwin and Frei so far had failed to achieve.

The term of the eight senators designated in the final stages of the dictatorship also ends on Mar. 11, 1998, the day the 81- year-old Pinochet is set to retire. With that deadline looming, the right has indicated a new willingness to negotiate reforms such as an end to the posts of designated senators and the reestablishment of the president’s power to name and sack top-level military chiefs.

Also on the drawing board is a return to the proportional electoral system for legislative elections, which was replaced at the start of the de facto regime in 1973 by a system that excludes the smallest parties.

Today, Frei sees a new space favourable to the renegotiation of civilian-military relations, not only in terms of the political right, but also with the armed forces themselves. Toward that end, the president and Defence Minister Edmundo Perez are following a policy of a pragmatic drawing near to Pinochet, whose relations with Frei’s predecessor Aylwin were marked by constant strife.

But human rights groups, and particularly family members of the roughly 2,500 “disappeared” and murdered victims of the dictatorship, accuse Frei of ignoring that grim legacy in favour of a “normalisation” of relations with the armed forces.

Continuing impunity for human rights violations is one aspect in which Frei and the governing Concertation of Parties for Democracy have both drawn fire.

The coalition – comprised of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), Pro Democracy Party (PPD), Socialist Party (PS) and Radical Social Democratic Party – has also reached the third anniversary of the government with questionmarks in its future.

The PDC is caught up in a heated campaign for its Apr. 6 internal elections. Two of the three lists of candidates are fighting for continued Christian Democratic domination of the coalition, attempting to curb the rise of poll-favourite Ricardo Lagos, the leader of the PS-PPD bloc, who threatens to sweep the December 1999 general elections.

Frei appears to be at the margin of the dispute within his party and its possible repercussions on the ruling coalition. His attention is trained on the tasks at hand, a main one being an ambitious educational reform project, envisioned as key to the creation of opportunities for Chile’s four million poor – out of a total population of 14 million.

Another of his aims is to strengthen the open market model with a continuous growth of exports and a constant inflow of foreign investment. In his three years in office, Frei continued the work of Aylwin on the economic front. Chile remained at the top of the list in Latin America with its growth in production and steady drop in inflation.

The country is also pushing for closer economic and commercial integration through accords with the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) and the European Union.

But the second phase of the export model pushed by the government, which would consist of stepping up the offer of goods with added value and reducing sales of raw materials, appears a long way off, according to political analysts.

Environmental groups have taken issue with the export model based on the exploitation of natural resources and Frei’s support for development of the energy sector based on large hydroelectric plants.

Another negative aspect at the halfway mark of Frei’s term has been the protests he has drawn for what critics see as an economic policy that tends to line itself up with business at the expense of community and environmental demands.