Who really won the Chilean
AS PREDICTED, Chile's presidential elections on December
14, 1989, resulted in a clear victory for the opposition candidate — Patricio Alwyn, a Christian Democrat, obtained
55.2% of the votes. There was, then, no second round and
Alwyn will become president on March 14 of this year. Despite the results, the system of elections to the parliament and senate established by the dictatorship with the aim of excluding the left has functioned perfectly. Overall the opposition did not obtain the working majority which it had set its sights on in elther chamber. Thus, It is legitimate to ask today who the real winners of the election were.
February 26, 1990 • #179 International Viewpoint elections?
ORLANDO SIERRA T HE CHILEAN bourgeoisie breathed a sigh of relief - the fall of the dictatorship could have been much worse. When the extent of the popular mobilizations between 1983 and 1986 is considered!, the right can take heart from having been able to restore order through ceding the presidency of the republic to the wiliest of
Christian Democrat leaders, at the same time assuring itself a majority in the senate and a blocking minority in the national assembly. The stock market certainly understood this, registering a rise of 5% 24 hours after the general elections. The doyen of Chilean bosses, Manuel Felin, characterized the results as "satisfactory".
### Candidate of military decisively defeated
Certainly, the regime's favoured candidate for president, Herman Büchi, was well beaten, obtaining only 29% of the votes (Pinochet, in the plebiscite of October 1988, managed 44%). But could it have been otherwise? This former Minister of Finance had been associated with radical cuts in the health and education budgets, the secret financing of repressive services, and the decline of old age pensions to a point below the minimum level necessary to survive - winning over the voters was obviously going to be an uphill task for him. In reality, Büchi was, for the right, nothing more than a stopgap to be sacrificed without remorse in an election which it knew all along to be lost. In this context of debacle, there was plenty of room for a potential godsend like "Fra-Fra" Errazuriz, who had been responsible for gathering in a considerable portion of the "yes" votes in last year's referendum 2. But this racketeer with a troubled past, who made a fortune thanks to the financial support he was able to win from the military regime, is strong only in rhetoric. His all-purpose demagogy finally had only a limited effect, and did more damage to Büchi than to the opposition candidate.
The "president of all the Chileans", Patricio Alwyn, is then placed at the centre of the institutional game by his victory on December 14. But is he arbitrator or hostage? Having withdrawn, but not very far, the armed forces watch, with Pinochet at their head. The regime is henceforth a coin with two sides, civil and military.
### Ancien regime pledges support to Aylwin
Whatever Alwyn's role, the bourgeois parties have wasted no time in pledging allegiance to the newly elected president. Even the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), the black guard of "Pinochetism", has promised Alwyn that it will form "a loyal and constructive opposition". But it is above all in the ranks of National Renewal, where the majority of the partisans of a regime on the road to extinction are grouped, that the Christian Democrat president has a right to expect the collaboration necessary for a painless transition.
Flanked on his left by an ever more moderate Socialism (the rest of the left did not gain representation in parliament) and on his right by wolves disguised as grandmothers, Alwyn will have plenty of room to proceed with the negotiation of the end of the regime. If he succeeds, the bourgeoisie could rediscover a new equilibrium. What about the amnesty law adopted in
CHILE 1978 to throw a veil over the crimes committed in the first years of the regime? The new authorities have already announced that it is technically impossible to abrogate. The liberation of political prisoners? Everything will depend on whether they are guilty of crimes of opinion or "crimes of blood" (the armed struggle against the dictatorship). The demands of the workers? The future minister of finance, Alejandro Foxley, has already counselled patience — "you can expect no miracles in the next few years..." Chilean people celebrate their victory
It remains to be seen if the Chilean people, who flooded into the streets of the big towns on December 14 and 15 to celebrate their victory will accept without reaction the betrayal of that victory. But their capacity for intervention and their independence in relation to the bourgeoisie's project depend on their organizations and the orientation of their leaderships. Indeed, it is there that the shoe pinches, for the Chilean left is itself "destabilized" by 1. Days of popular protest (protestas) against the regime took place from 1983 onwards. Faced with decreed a curfew in November 1984 and violently mounting popular opposition, the military regime repressed the demonstrations (there were some deaths and hundreds of wounded). 2. In the plebiscite of October 5, 1988, which he himself had called on the question of his remaining as head of the regime, General Pinochet was rejected by 25 54.68% of the voters against 43.04%.
----- photo credits and running heads -----
MrcanGürsel
International Viewpoint #179 • February 26, 1990
CHILE / NICARAGUA an unprecedented crisis.
The result of the parliamentary elections was disastrous for the parties of the left, which obtained only 23% of the votes. At the beginning of the 1970s, Pop ular Unity represented 45% of the votes? The loss of influence is indisputable, even if it is necessary to balance it against the reflex of the "useful vote" which worked in favour of the Christian Democracy, and by the electoral legislation concocted by the dictatorship so as to block the access of the workers' parties to parliament. None of the 17 Communist Party candidates were elected, and the two principal leaders of the non-Communist left, Luis Maira and Ricardo Lagos, who were candidates for the senate, were defeated.
Reflecting a deeply rooted electoralism the leaders of the left had to wait for an electoral defeat to proclaim in unison that "a serious self-critical balance-sheet is now indispensable"! In fact, the crisis goes well beyond an electoral reverse, and has several fundamental causes.
The impact of the East European revolutions
There is the collapse of the bureaucratic regimes, witnessed directly by the Chileans. Almost every home today possesses a television. The fall of the Berlin Wall or the Romanian revolution have been experienced in all their
Chile is no longer as isolated as was once the case. Questioned by the facts — and by their members — the traditional leaders, whose dependence on Stalinism has been reinforced by exile, have been unable to give satisfactory replies. Volodia Teitelboin and Clodomiro Almeydo, respectively general secretaries of the CP and a faction of the Socialist Party, were in East Berlin only a matter of months ago to celebrate the anniversary of the GDR's founding at the side of Erich Honecker!
Pressed by history, the leaderships have resorted to all kinds of political contortions to find their feet again. They have taken as their own the feeblest justifications which are accompanying, like a funeral chant, the twilight of the bureaucrats; "we are the precursors of perestroi-
But everybody knows that the Chilean
CP approved without any problem the intervention in Czechoslovakia and the invasion of Afghanistan..
But the left is also paying the price for the zigzags in its orientation. When a prerevolutionary situation began to open up in the wake of the protests from 1983 to
1986, it was never able to implement its policy of "popular rebellion". Yielding to radical pressures, particularly from the youth, the CP created an armed wing, the
(FPMR), which rapidly exerted a mass 26 hour of insurecion come influence in the poblaciones. Had the
In 1986, however, the Communist leadership drew back, and left thousands of people without orientation. The arms sup plies stored up at great cost in the north of the country were not distributed — it was the security services who were finally to seize them. A year later, the majority of the FPMR broke with the CP.
This lack of the will to pass on to a higher stage of struggle then explains the relative ebb which the popular movement has experienced in the following period. The bourgeois opposition has been able to occupy the high ground, and impose its "negotiated solution", through participation in the plebiscite of 1988. The Socialists made the turn rapidly, but the CP and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) came later and were deprived of all autonomy in the electoral struggle. And finally, their support for Alwyn, without doubt tactically justified, was agreed in the most opportunist fashion possible, without any accompanying campaign for popular demands. It is hardly astonishing then that rank-and-file militants, above all in the CP, were hard to mobilize during the electoral campaign. Turmoil grows within the left parties
Many Communist militants, critical of their leadership, have demanded the holding of an extraordinary congress. The MIR, already fragmented into three independent factions, is experiencing a debate whose conclusion is uncertain. Only the Socialist Party, henceforth seems in good shape although this could well be only temporary. The third largest parliamentary force, present in the govemment where it has five ministers, it is experiencing a full social democratic mutation, and has renounced the "left" orientation that has characterized it during its 60 year existence. But is it capable of durably reconciling the interests of its announced by the authorities?
If an axis for the political recomposition of the workers' movement does not appear rapidly, the decline of the left as well as its fragmentation will accelerate.
On the other hand, the bankruptcy of
Stalinism and the social- democratization of the SP open up sufficient space for the construction of a new party, which could draw its inspiration from the experience of the Brazilian PT. In fact, the real game has not yet begun, and everything is possi-
3. Salvador Allende, a Socialist and candidate of Popular Unity was elected president of the Republic in
Popular Unity comprised the Commun cialist and Radical parties as well as the Christi
F URTHERMORE, in the past six
months the legal Nicaraguan opposition, the UNO, whose stated objective is to overthrow the Sandinistas, has received an enormous amount of US economic aid. The UNO has been given $7m by the American Congress and private groups. The USA has also profited from the Gorbachev-Bush accords (reaffirmed at Malta in December 1989) which permit the US to intervene as they see fit in Central America. The Soviet spokespeople have restricted themselves to verbal protests against the invasion of Panama while repeating confidence in Bush's readiness to arrive at a negotiated settlement in the region.