Michelle Bachelet, who hopes to win a second presidential term in Chile, will have to win over the growing social movement that has been heavily critical of the current right-wing administration and disillusioned with 20 years of government by the centre-left coalition.

Bachelet returned this week to a country that is markedly different than the one she left after the end of her four-year term, in March 2010. In the last two years, student organisations, trade unions and other civil society groups have held the largest protests since the resistance to the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of the late General Augusto Pinochet.

Michelle Bachelet will seek a second presidential term in Chile. Credit: Sriyantha Walpola/IPS

“She is now finding a large and significant part of society that wants change, and not merely improvements of the current model,” anthropologist Mauricio Rojas, a professor at the Alberto Hurtado University, told IPS.

“It is a group that was culturally, socially and politically invisible for 30 years, but has now woken up,” he said.

After the 1988 plebiscite that paved the way for the return to democracy, “there was strong criticism of the (economic, financial and political) model, which waned after democracy was restored.”

But the arrival of the right to power, with President Sebastián Piñera, “released a force that was repressed or self-contained, and that wants change.”

On Wednesday, Mar. 27 Bachelet officially announced that she intended to run for president again, in the Nov. 17 elections. The announcement came just 12 hours after she landed in Santiago, returning from New York, where she spent the last three years as the head of the U.N. women’s agency.

In her first public statements, the former president said the fight against inequality would be the central focus of her campaign; acknowledged, in frank terms, the errors committed by the successive administrations of the centre-left Concertación or coalition of Parties for Democracy (1990-2010); and called for “in-depth reforms” of the current political and economic model.

“Chile has changed,” she said. “It is a much more active country, more conscious of its rights, whose people are tired of the abuse of power and are fed up with their needs not being taken into account.”

“The citizens today are more mature and empowered,” added Bachelet, who was one of Chile’s most popular presidents.

Iván Fuentes, the leader of the small-scale fishers of the remote southern region of Aysén, agreed that Chilean society today is “less conformist and wants far-reaching changes.”

Fuentes is also the head of the Aysén social movement that began to hold protests in early 2012 over a range of issues. The unrest in his region, which forms part of the wilderness area of Patagonia, is basically the result of people there feeling ignored by the central government.

“It is a non-conformist but constructive society, which means this is a good opportunity to work together as a country, because people want to set forth ideas, to be listened to; they don’t want policies in which others decide for them,” Fuentes said.

In an interview with IPS, the head of the Aysén social movement said that despite the challenges, “politics today has the opportunity to get on the good side of Chilean society.”

In her first speech on the campaign trail, Bachelet mentioned social inequality, the student protest movement demanding free quality public education, the demonstrations in the regions, sexual and reproductive rights, and the inclusion of the country’s indigenous minority, among other issues. She also promised to listen to society’s demands.

A source close to the former president told IPS that a team of experts was already drawing up a proposal for tuition-free education for segments of the population who have not been eligible for school vouchers or other state subsidies.

The idea, the source said, is to implement measures that would gradually move the country towards public education completely free of cost, like in neighbouring Argentina.

Political scientist Guillermo Holzmann said one of the biggest challenges for Bachelet, a 62-year-old pediatrician-turned-politician, will be winning over segments of society that do not see her as someone who represents them. “Solving that problem should be a priority,” he told IPS.

Holzmann pointed out that the change in Chile’s legislation that made voting non-compulsory affected all political forces as a result of low turnout in the October 2012 municipal elections, when it went into force. (Only 42 percent of the 13.4 million people of voting age – of a total population of 16.5 million – came out for the elections.)

In polls, Bachelet has ratings of more than 50 percent – the proportion needed to avoid a runoff.

She has had time to prepare her return. And the political leaders of the centre-left coalition, whose reputations have taken a beating, not only did not accompany her physically in her first public appearance, but were not even mentioned in her speech.

In the latest survey by the Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP), 57 percent of respondents said they did not feel represented by any political party or coalition.

Holzmann said: “What Bachelet says or does will be key for the unity of the Concertación,” which is made up of the For Democracy, Christian Democrat, Socialist and Social Democrat Radical parties, and is experiencing a severe internal crisis.

Bachelet said she would run in the primary elections for the candidate of a new opposition coalition that represents a much broader social and political majority than the Concertación. The new coalition is to include the Communist Party.

In the primaries, the former president will run against lawmaker Claudio Orrego, the Christian Democrat candidate; independent candidate Andrés Velasco, who served as her finance minister; and Senator José Antonio Gómez of the Social Democrat Radical party.

If she overcomes that first hurdle, Bachelet will face off with the candidate of President Piñera’s rightwing Coalition for Change. Competing for the candidacy are former defence minister Andrés Allamand of the National Renewal party and former public works minister Laurence Golborne of the Independent Democratic Union.

The candidate of the small Progressive Party, former socialist Marco Enríquez-Ominami, who took 20 percent of the vote in 2009, also formally announced that he would run for president.

Holzmann said Bachelet would have to live up to the high expectations surrounding her return, “especially among the factions in the Concertación who see her as a real alternative capable of winning the presidential elections.”

The former president’s popularity has remained high despite her nearly three-year stint abroad. She finished her four-year presidential term with 80 percent popularity ratings. And 53 percent of respondents, according to the CEP, believe she will be the next president.

In her speech, delivered in the southern Santiago district of El Bosque, Bachelet was given an enthusiastic welcome. “I love her, I love her, and she loves me too, I’m happy!” shouted one local woman who managed to exchange a few words with the former president and give her a kiss.

But that makes the challenge even greater, because if an eventual Bachelet administration fails to bring about the changes that society is demanding, the Concertación will be unable to contain the growing social movement, Rojas said.

“The social movement is now totally autonomous from the political structures, and if in-depth changes are not forthcoming, it will continue pressuring for them to happen,” he said.

Hundreds walk in Paseo de los Próceres in Caracas on Mar. 10 to pay their respects to the late Hugo Chávez in the funeral chapel. Credit:Raúl Límaco/IPS

By Adrián Bonilla
SAN JOSE, Mar 15 2013 (IPS)

Although there is plenty of speculation about what will happen now President Hugo Chávez is gone, the likelihood of change in Venezuelan politics and society is low.

To gauge the significance of the upcoming elections, to be held on Apr. 14, the results of the last three presidential elections over the past 12 years must be analysed. The electorate’s vote in favour of Chávez was a constant factor while the opposition’s performance was uneven.

The best result for Chávez was in 2006, when he garnered 62.8 percent of the vote against 36.9 percent for the opposition. Six years earlier, Chávez took a slightly lower proportion of the vote: 59.8 percent, while the opposition’s figure was similar to the 2006 tally, at 37.5 percent.

In 2012 Chávez won again, but this time his proportion of the vote fell by four percentage points with respect to the result in 2000, to 55.1 percent, while the opposition vote grew by eight points, to 44.3 percent. In all three elections the number of invalid votes was insignificant, and in 2012 it was less than two percent.

Analysed over time, these results reveal at least three trends.

In the first place, the electoral advantage of the government forces is a historical constant. The narrowest margin over the opposition was 11 percent, huge in political terms, while the widest was a whopping 36 percent. The results of the upcoming elections could lie between these two figures, if there is no major change in the trends.

A second inference that can be made is the high level of politicisation of Venezuelan society, reflected in the high turnout at elections and the low numbers of sceptics who have made their point with blank or spoiled ballot papers.

A third trend is the way voters are lined up for and against Chávez, with three different main opposition candidates, who were however strong enough to obliterate minor candidates.

With these facts, we can ask ourselves whether an event of such magnitude as the death of the Venezuelan president can alter the electoral scenario and the trends that have been consolidated over the last 12 years, and the answer is that this appears unlikely, for several reasons.

In first place, the polarisation of society must be reckoned with. In Venezuela there have only been two political positions: for or against Chávez, who managed to maintain his support base throughout his administration.

Chávez’s personality was so strong that the opposition, originally heterogeneous and with an ideological spectrum ranging through almost all possible positions from left to right, united in order to act as a suitable counterweight, whatever its members’ views on development and the economy.

Chavismo was also made up of different positions that came together around the figure of the president himself. Both government and opposition forces have kept to stable positions, and that stability appears likely to continue after the forthcoming elections.

In second place, the electoral spectrum cannot have varied greatly since the last election (in October 2012). Turnout and voter intentions will probably be quite similar. The government candidate (acting president Nicolás Maduro) is different, but the vote for Chávez has been consistent, and in addition, regional elections in Venezuela have amply proved that votes for the presidential candidate are, in fact, transferred to other candidates close to the president.

The government candidate will appeal to the memory of the deceased president and will legitimately present himself as the person who represents continuity. There are plenty of reasons for this argument, including his close ties (as vice president) to the administration, as well as the fact that Chávez himself explicitly urged people to vote for him.

The opposition has no other choice than to remain the opposition, although this may sound like a tautology. In other words, in terms of images there is also a stability about the Venezuelan election campaign: the political actors are the same, and their discourse has not changed.

Finally, the resources available to both candidates, their advertising potential, territorial organisation and electoral dynamics have not changed either. These aspects of their positions – asymmetrical or not – remain unaltered.

All this leads to the supposition that a reversal of the trends, and of the way Venezuelan politics has been organised for over 10 years, is highly unlikely.

Neither is the continuity in the political sphere going to change dramatically when it comes to Venezuela’s public policies and international agenda.

It should be remembered that the present government team in Venezuela has been working together, making large and small decisions for at least the time during which the president was critically ill.

Clearly, the most urgent item on the agenda is the economy, which needs to stabilise its resources in order to maintain the government’s set of social programmes and public works.

In the international arena, there is probably no reason for altering the recent Venezuelan position of adhering to and promoting multilateral organisations.

Caracas will continue to support the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), and will maintain its commitment to the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), a strategic bloc in which it has a central position.

In other words, the passing of Chávez, while an event of historical significance for Venezuela and Latin America, will apparently not bring about short-term changes in domestic policy, nor in the traditions and behaviours exhibited by Caracas on the international scene.

The stability of this scenario will clearly be an advantage for the rest of the countries in the hemisphere.

* Adrián Bonilla is secretary general of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) and has a doctorate in international relations from the University of Miami.

Female candidates are poised to occupy an unprecedented third of the seats in Mexico’s bicameral parliament when preliminary results for the Jul.1 election are confirmed.

In the lower chamber, 95 women were elected through direct vote (in a relative majority system), according to the preliminary results from the Federal Electoral Institute.

That is 31.7 percent of the seats filled through direct vote in that chamber, almost doubling the 17.33 percent obtained in 2009 when 52 women were elected. In the previous elections, however, eight women had given up their places to a male alternate.

In addition, 91 women were elected through the system of multi-candidate lists (proportional representation). This means that when the new legislative period is inaugurated on Sep. 1 the lower chamber will have a total of 186 female representatives, or 37.2 percent of the house.

This historical representation is the result of two decades of lobbying that culminated in a legal obligation requiring political parties to fill at least 40 percent of their candidate lists with women.

The results will put more women in positions to make decisions for and on behalf of their fellow women, says Clara Scherer, a gender expert and member of SUMA, a United Nations Women project aimed at engaging more women in Mexico’s political life.

Despite allegations of vote buying, intimidation and other irregularities surrounding this month’s election, Mexican women have cause to celebrate as the election results mark a step towards achieving gender equality in political participation.

Experts consulted by IPS/Cimac* said that if the final count confirms preliminary data and there are no challenges, this will be the legislative term with the largest number of women representatives in Mexico.

“We’re not expecting to see a change overnight. We’re not naïve and we don’t live in a dream world. We know it’s going to be harder and harder to make even minor progress,” Scherer said.

In the senate, an estimated 35 percent of the seats will be occupied by women. Mexico’s parliament consists of a lower chamber (house of representatives) with 500 members and a higher chamber (senate) with 128 seats.

Scherer, however, urged civil society to hold parties to their obligation of meeting the gender quota.

In 2011, activists from across the political spectrum brought action to the Electoral Court of the Federal Judicial Branch (TEPJF) to protect their political rights by forcing parties to comply with the 60-40 quota when nominating candidates for parliament.

On Nov. 30, 2011, the higher electoral court ruled to enforce full compliance with the quota provisions, in place since 2008, ordering parties to nominate women in at least 40 percent of their candidacies (including alternates) for the 2012 elections.

Martha Tagle, an activist with Citizenship Movement and one of the women behind the legal action, said the task now is to monitor the work these women do in parliament, and help them further the gender agenda.

“We need to advance on these issues, and we have no excuse not to,” Tagle, who has been elected alternate senator, said.

Ruth Zavaleta, who served as president of the lower chamber from 2007 to 2008, said the challenge for the new women legislators will be to prove that there are no differences in the way men and women exercise power.

Zavaleta, currently head of gender matters at the TEPJF, said Mexican women now have a chance to participate in interior, justice, budget, finance and other key parliamentary committees, rather than be relegated to the social committees by their male peers.

“Quotas are not enough, women have to play a greater role in decision making, in a way that makes them more visible to society, in order to combat the (sexist) culture,” Zavaleta said.

One of the first women who took on the challenge is Angélica de la Peña who, according to preliminary results, has been elected senator for the Democratic Revolution Party. She has promised to work on amending the country’s laws to enable women to access decision-making positions.

She observed that the terms of the 2011 electoral court ruling (decision no. 12624) had to be translated into laws that promote women’s participation, not only in politics but also in business and trade unions.

This month’s parliamentary elections were the first in which political parties complied fully with the 40 percent quota for women candidates, marking the last stage in a long struggle for effective political participation for Mexican women.

In 1993, the Federal Code of Electoral Institutions and Procedures was revised, establishing criteria to compensate for the disadvantages faced by women in politics.

The amended code encouraged parties to promote women’s involvement in the country’s political life by nominating them to positions elected by popular vote, but leaving it to parties to define how and to what extent they would implement this recommendation.

In 1996, the code was further amended, stipulating that a 70 percent ceiling on male parliament candidates be established.

In 2002, the lower house voted unanimously in favour of a 30 percent quota for women candidates to federal positions elected by popular vote. The spirit of this reform was to move forward towards a democracy based on equality in which men and women can have the same access to positions of power.

According to data from the TEPJF, 13 countries in Latin America have implemented gender quotas: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela.

As of April 2011, the average percentage of women in parliaments worldwide was 19.5 in the lower chamber (the sole chamber in some countries) and 18.3 in the senate.

Only 1.9 percent of the suits heard by the electoral court from 1996 to 2008 had to do with gender quotas, which indicates that female political activists were not demanding that their right to be nominated be respected, despite the efforts to implement mandatory quotas.

Nonetheless, women’s political participation this year was shaped by a ruling of the electoral court after a group of women from different parties brought an action to enforce compliance with the gender quota.

* This article was originally published by the Mexican news agency Comunicación e Información de la Mujer AC, Cimac.

Twenty years ago, a military rebellion led by Venezuelan president – then lieutenant-colonel – Hugo Chávez ushered in an enduring era of turmoil for the country’s democracy, with abrupt changes in its institutions and a climate of political upheaval and social and economic instability.

Hugo Chávez stating the Feb. 4, 1992 uprising had failed "for now". Credit: Public domain

In the early hours of Feb. 4, 1992, Venezuelans, whose most recent dictatorship had fallen in 1958 and who had not seen a barracks uprising since 1962, woke up to the news that soldiers rebelling against then president Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974-1979, 1989-1993) were battling loyal forces at strategic points of the capital city.

The attempted coup left at least 20 people dead, soldiers and civilians, and was a failure in military terms. The ringleaders, five army lieutenant-colonels including Chávez, and dozens of other officers were arrested and tried.

However, the rebels scored a resounding political victory when Chávez appeared on national television, surrounded by his captors. Projecting confidence and strength of purpose, he called on the remaining rebels to lay down their arms, and said their goals had not been achieved “for now”. He also took full responsibility for the failed coup.

“February 4, 1992 split Venezuelan history into two, before and after,” Chávez has claimed ever since that time, and the 20th anniversary of the coup attempt is being duly commemorated this Saturday with a grand military parade on the scale of the Jul. 5 Independence Day parades.

This date is a watershed in recent Venezuelan history, “not as a military defeat, but for its negative consequences, as the rebels benefited from the incompetence of the elites in power, who backed off in fright,” Carlos Raúl Hernández, a professor of political science at Universidad Simón Bolívar, told IPS.

Another bloody attempt to overthrow the government was made on Nov. 27, 1992, led by the navy and air force.

While in prison, the military rebels attracted popular and media support; part of public opinion called for Pérez’s resignation, and amid a climate of political instability the president was deposed in May 1993 by a combination of decisions of the Supreme Court and the National Congress.

Congress designated an interim president who was in a fragile position; in December 1993 president Rafael Caldera (1969-1974, 1994- 1999) was elected in his place. Caldera was by this time distanced from the Christian Democratic Party he had founded half a century earlier, which like other traditional parties was in a state of internal collapse.

Caldera served a five-year term marked by contradictory economic policies, disagreement among politicians on constitutional and legal reforms, the pardon and early release in 1994 of the rebels who took part in the 1992 coup, and the Supreme Court conviction of Pérez for embezzlement of discretionary presidential funds, which he claimed went to support the electoral process in Nicaragua.

“In political terms, the pardon of the rebels and the disgrace of Pérez made it look like the conspirators had been right all along; the political leadership, limited in ability and cowardly, backed off; and so Chávez was able to embark on his rise to power,” said Hernández.

Chávez ran in the 1988 presidential elections, casting himself as the champion of the poor and of the fight against corruption, and spearheading the demand for a constituent assembly (to rewrite the constitution) that would “re-found the republic.” He won with 56 percent of the vote.

Upon taking office in 1999 he held a referendum to convene a constituent assembly. His supporters won 95 percent of the seats and the new constitution reflected their social, political and economic aims. Chávez was re-elected to another six-year term in 2000. Congress was converted into a single-chamber parliament, and five branches of government were instituted: legislative, executive, judicial, electoral and citizen’s (or “moral”) branch.

“Convinced that he must destroy what existed so that a new order could come to birth, Chávez eliminated or changed institutions and legal provisions of the state, thus identifying himself with the Venezuelan tradition of improvisation and temporariness that deprives us of foundations for permanent coexistence,” historian Agustín Blanco Muñoz, author of “Habla el comandante” (The Commander Speaks) a book-length interview in which Chávez expounded his programme in 1997-1998, told IPS.

In 2001, empowered to legislate by decree, Chávez enacted 49 laws, including a land law that provoked opposition from company owners and trade unions. Strikes and demonstrations ensued, culminating in an anti-Chávez coup on Apr. 11, 2002.

The military commanders who deposed Chávez appointed Pedro Carmona, head of the FEDECÁMARAS employers’ association, as interim president. But elite military units refused to recognise Carmona; Chávez supporters poured on to the streets demanding his return; the coup was overturned and Chávez returned to power Apr. 14.

The political crisis persisted, and a management strike at the state oil company and the largest private businesses in December 2002 and January 2003 led to internationally-aided negotiations for holding a recall referendum to revoke the president’s mandate.

During 2003, with huge oil revenues and advice from then Cuban president Fidel Castro, Chávez launched a number of social programmes, called “missions”, to meet the health care, nutrition, education and employment needs of the poorest population.

The recall referendum held in 2004 failed to remove Chávez from office, and the opposition was weakened. The president was re-elected in 2006, took up the cause of socialism, reorganised the parties that supported him into the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and accentuated his antagonism against the United States.

In 2007, a proposal for constitutional reform to allow indefinite re- election of an incumbent president put forward by Chávez was narrowly defeated, and the opposition began to regroup, to the point that it believes it could win the next presidential elections scheduled for October this year.

Chávez can now stand for re-election indefinitely, as the Supreme Court allowed a second referendum on the question in 2009, when the political climate was more favourable for the proposal than in 2007 and it was approved.

The president proposes a new paradigm for Venezuela, “21st century socialism,” but critics say it lacks a programme to give it substance, and its key aspects are communicated in dribs and drabs in Chávez’s weekly television addresses and his explanations of government decisions and actions.

“He is trying to breathe life into a corpse; it’s the detritus of 20th century ‘real socialism’. But he is not alone, he has Cuba and other international allies and the oil resources. No other populist project in Latin America has had the economic base and the sheer scope that Chávez’s has had,” Blanco Muñoz said.

In Hernández’s view, “Chávez’s project is banking on the collapse of democracy, but in Latin America it has been dictatorships and authoritarianism that have collapsed, and his regime too is destined to fail. One example is the unproductive economy, which is deepening our dependence on oil and the income it provides.”

Former socialist leader Teodoro Petkoff, the editor of the opposition newspaper Tal Cual, said there is in Venezuela “an underlying bedrock of democracy, burned on to the hard disk of our society, that has resisted and will continue to resist Chávez’s authoritarian project.”

Chávez and his supporters insist that the groups and forces that governed for 40 years of representative democracy (1958-1998) before he came to power “will never return,” and that after winning the elections next October, the 57-year-old president, who had a cancerous tumour removed in 2011, will stay in office until 2030 or beyond.

In Blanco Muñoz’s view, because of his control over all the branches of power and the electoral process, “in the short or medium term it will be impossible to defeat Chávez” in elections like those due in October, although “contrary to government rhetoric, nothing in history is irreversible.”

Hernández holds the contrasting view that “it looks like it will be more difficult for Chávez to win than for the opposition to score a victory.” The organisations that make up the opposition Coalition for Democratic Unity (MUD) will hold open primaries on Feb. 12 to select their presidential candidate from among five hopefuls.

A radical political group based in a working class neighbourhood of the Venezuelan capital has sparked a furore by publishing photographs of children from the community, with their faces partially hidden, brandishing AR-15 assault rifles.

Children with rifles photographed in front of a mural of Christ carrying a machine gun. Credit: Colectivo La Piedrita

The group in question, the La Piedrita Collective, controls the 23 de Enero parish in Caracas, a neighbourhood that has been a leftwing stronghold for decades and is where President Hugo Chávez – whom the collective claims to support – casts his vote during elections.

Photographs posted on internet social networks Jan. 29 show youngsters participating in a public event, alongside adult men and women, wielding assault rifles in front of murals of famous guerrilla fighters, as well as one depicting Jesus Christ armed with a similar weapon.

On numerous occasions in recent years, the La Piedrita Collective has released pictures of its members, sometimes masked, openly carrying guns in public. It has also claimed responsibility for tear gas grenade attacks on the headquarters of media outlets, the Catholic Archbishopric, the Caracas Athenaeum and the Christian-Democratic opposition party COPEI.

There is an outstanding warrant for the arrest of the group’s top leader Valentín Santana, accused of homicide, and Chávez himself ordered Santana’s arrest during a 2009 television programme.

But the order has never been carried out, and Santana is reported to have been in attendance at a public event held in the parish this January by the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Minister of Interior and Justice Tarek El Aissami stated that the government “rejects and condemns the handling of guns by children and adolescents,” something it considers unacceptable because it “violates the moral principles established in the constitution and threatens the integral development of our children.”

El Aissami ordered an investigation to determine who is responsible for the pictures of the armed children, some of whom appear to be as young as five years old.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office has also instructed the Department of Family Protection to open an investigation “to determine both the veracity of the events and the individuals responsible, and to take action accordingly.”

Pablo Fernández, technical secretary of the recently created Presidential Commission for Firearms Control and Disarmament, said that what was most troubling about this incident was the “grotesque, irresponsible and immoral” way in which children were used.

He stressed the need to establish the responsibility of the adults who organised the event at which the photographs were taken, as well as those who took the photographs, whatever their intentions, because “children as young as these have little understanding of how they are being used.”

Fernando Pereira, co-director of CECODAP, a Venezuelan NGO that works for children’s rights, told IPS: “This affair needs to be clearly addressed. What we hear from mothers and fathers on the streets is that they want to see concrete evidence of political will to protect children and adolescents, and that violence must not be condoned.”

Pereira added that spreading images of children with guns was like “adding fuel to the fire of the already well-known problem of violence.”

In Venezuela, with a population of 29 million, a million and a half crimes and 19,000 homicides are recorded annually, according to CECODAP.

El Aissami, while not specifying the actual number of slayings that year, reported in late 2011 that the murder rate in the country was 48 per 100,000 population.

Every month, around 100 children and adolescents in Venezuela fall victim to violent death, says CECODAP.

Different NGOs offer varying statistics regarding the number of firearms illegally in the possession of the general population, with some claiming the total to be in the millions.

Rocío San Miguel of the Citizens’ Watch for Security, Defence and the Armed Forces told IPS that the AR-15 rifles shown in the photographs, manufactured by ArmaLite of the United States, “have been used by the political police, and its chief, general Miguel Rodríguez, should explain how they came to be in the possession of those who are using them in 23 de Enero.” Rodríguez is the head of the Venezuelan intelligence service.

San Miguel stressed that Venezuela is a signatory to international agreements that prohibit the participation of children in armed groups, in addition to national legislation adopted to ensure respect for the rights of children.

Under the Law for the Protection of Children and Adolescents, it is illegal to provide minors under the age of 18 with access in any way to tobacco, alcohol, illicit drugs or pornographic material. There is also a law to protect minors from exposure to war-related toys and videogames, as well as to messages that promote hatred or violence.

“Any adults who endorsed this incident through their presence are directly responsible both morally and criminally. They should have been arrested immediately, because they are completely identifiable,” sociologist Luis Cedeño of the NGO Active Peace commented to IPS, adding that the government needs to ensure that these arrests are made in order to clearly distance itself from the incident.

After the scandal erupted, some of the women who appear in the photographs with the armed children released a video filmed in a classroom with the young pupils holding up books on Venezuelan history and the country’s constitution, in which they state, “These are the weapons we give to our children.”

The La Piedrita Collective also acts as a “consejo comunal” or community council, a local organisational body created by the government to fund community services. In this capacity, it operates public transport vehicles, a brick factory, sports fields and an ambulance.

In June and July 2011, when heavily armed prisoners rioted for three weeks in a penitentiary near Caracas, congressman Diosdado Cabello and a La Piedrita Collective member who identified himself to the media only by his alias, “Satanás” (Satan), acted as mediators between the prisoners and the government to resolve the conflict.

Cabello, the president of the National Assembly (Congress) since January and vice president of the PSUV, declared on the day after the photographs appeared, “We totally and utterly condemn the use of children in this way.

“The people responsible for this are doing a great disservice to the revolution,” he stressed. “The president has tirelessly repeated that this is a peaceful revolution, that it does not use weapons, which are solely used by the armed forces.”

Opposition leaders, especially those vying to be chosen as candidates for upcoming presidential and local Caracas elections, have not only loudly condemned the actions of the La Piedrita Collective, but have also accused the government of tolerating, encouraging and even supplying weapons to this kind of group.

Campaigning is already under way for the presidential elections scheduled for Oct. 7. The opposition coalition, Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), will choose its candidate from among five hopefuls in primary elections to be held Feb. 12.

Chile’s political system is “exhausted” and urgently needs reform to truly represent its citizens, consolidate democracy and ensure governability, say experts consulted by IPS.

The current system was designed in 1980, under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet who died in 2006, and is perpetuated by the “leyes de amarre”, or “laws keeping things tied up”, incorporated in the 1980 constitution which with minor modifications is in force to this day.

Authoritarian features of Chile’s institutions, a legacy from the military regime, are preserved by the “leyes de amarre” which are virtually cast in concrete.

One of the most controversial issues is the “binominal” (dual candidate) electoral system, which encourages domination by two large coalitions: the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy (Concertación), in power from 1990 to 2010, and the rightwing Coalition for Change that is now in government.

The system promotes a perpetual near-tie between the two leading coalitions which has blocked real change and hampered the introduction of mechanisms like mandatory primary elections for candidates within political parties.

“When the country returned to democracy (in 1990), 90 percent of the people were registered to vote and 85 percent actually voted,” sociologist Marta Lagos told IPS.

“Now, less than 70 percent of those eligible actually turn out to vote, and one-third of potential electors are not registered,” she complained.

“The political system undermines citizens’ sovereignty,” she said.

She added that for the first 20 years of democracy, Chile directed its efforts at improving the economy, rather than the political system, which is why its institutions are so backward.

Political analyst Guillermo Holzmann concurred, and said the constraints of the electoral system are perceived as an obstacle to more effective representation by both political parties and general citizens.

“What we have today is disillusion with the political system in general and with democracy in particular, and this is all related to participation mechanisms,” he said.

“If citizens lack adequate mechanisms for making their voices heard, or cannot exert any influence on executive branch decisions, it will be very difficult to achieve a higher quality democracy,” Holzmann said.

In his view, the fundamental issue is the quality of democracy, “which requires a more comprehensive reform, not only of the electoral system, but to establish mechanisms to give independent sectors an opportunity to participate.”

Lagos and Holzmann agreed that reform is more urgent now, after last year which was marked by the most vigorous social protests since the return of democracy.

There is a climate of social unrest that has the government of rightwing President Sebastián Piñera with its back up against a wall, and Piñera’s personal approval rating has plummeted below that of any president since democracy was restored.

“The social protests are a consequence of the crisis of representation arising from this electoral system. If you ask people if their political ideas are represented, 60 percent of Chileans say, ‘no’,” said Lagos.

She said that when a political system does not allow pluralism and free competition between ideas, a country “effectively ends up being ungovernable”.

“People eventually take their frustration on to the streets, and the more the street protests, the less representation is vested in the political system,” Lagos said.

A new law introducing automatic voter registration and voluntary voting, removing the obligation on registered electors to exercise their vote, is adding to the pressure for electoral system reform.

By eliminating the need to register as a voter at the age of 18, this law will add 4.5 million voters to the electoral roll, 80 percent of whom are aged under 35.

At the promulgation of the law on Jan. 23, Piñera said that the reform raises the number of potential voters by 55 percent, and that of electors under the age of 29 by 332 percent, a significant rejuvenation of the pool of potential voters.

This legal change will be put into practice for the first time in the local municipal elections in October, with an electoral roll swollen from eight million voters to 12.5 million. The total population of Chile is 17.5 million.

Then there is the proposal for structural changes to the “binominal” electoral system, put forward by the governing National Renewal party and the opposition Christian Democratic party, the first instance of a reform pursued jointly by the two coalitions dominating national politics.

Under the binomial system, parties or coalitions present lists of two candidates in each congressional electoral district, for two parliamentary seats; both seats are awarded to the most-voted list, or one seat each to the top two lists if the list in second place receives more than half the votes obtained by the first.

However, experts say that a structural reform of the electoral system could take years, and will therefore remain an issue in future legislative and presidential elections, due in 2013 and every four years thereafter. The binomial system is in the interests of sitting lawmakers, who are therefore reluctant to eliminate it.

Holzmann doubts whether the structural reform could be approved in time for the 2013 elections.

“It is not very feasible, because no matter how seats in Congress are distributed between the political parties, it is very unlikely they will commit a sort of premature political suicide by approving a reform that will affect them directly at the next elections,” he said.

All in all, it is hard to see what direction a new electoral system in Chile will take, as in Lagos’ view, “there is no single optimal system.”

“If we look at the history of electoral systems, we realise they are infinitely heterogeneous, and therefore there is no ideal model. Every nation finds its own electoral system; the choice is very wide and the combinations are many,” the sociologist said.

Changing the party system is “very complex”, she said, and gave as an illustration the electoral reform in Mexico.

“Looking around the rest of the region, one sees that the main weakness of democracy in Latin America has been achieving the institutionalisation of new party systems. In Chile the system was already institutionalised (by the Pinochet dictatorship) and that was one of the great strengths that allowed the country to develop economically, but now the system is exhausted,” she said.

Piñera himself, at the promulgation of the new law, recognised there are signs of “exhaustion” in Chilean democracy and a “loss or weakening of prestige in the principal democratic institutions”.

The government also wishes to enact a law to make primary elections for political party candidates mandatory; unblock another law to allow Chileans living abroad to register as voters; and make polling stations and voting booths mixed, instead of the present arrangements where men and women vote separately.

But these changes have met with head-on resistance from within the governing coalition, especially from its second largest party, the far-right Independent Democratic Union, the political heir of Pinochet, which opposes any change to the binomial system instituted by the dictatorship.

“Chile must find a new system in order to compete in the globalised world, because the institutions adopted in the past are now being resisted by the Chilean people,” said Holzmann.