Senator-for-life Pinochet
On March 11 Chile's former dictator, general Augusto Pinochet surrendered control of the armed forces in exchange for a lifetime seat in the senate. Under the constitution he himself drafted, this will guarantee him immunity to prosecution for his role in the 1973 coup and subsequent repression. Pedro Brieger The ceremony for the transfer of powers took place on Tuesday. March ll in the Military School, which is located in the heart of Las Condes, the wealthiest and most pro-Pinochet neighbourhood of Santiago. This was very symbolic. Almost everyone attended: the soldiers that carried out the coup, the civilian leaders that accompanied him in government, the businessmen that were able to profit because Pinochet took eate of eliminating all political and trade union opposition and the educated economists from the University of Chicago that brought their "magical' remedies. The wives of the military leaders who, thanks to Pinochet. went from selling tortillas to becoming high society "ladies" also attended the activity. 10 International Viewpoint #300
Since the Ceremony took place the Military School, all the regiments that had permitted Pinochet to be the head of the Army for 25 years were also in attendance.
Five thousand soldiers marched in homage to the Captain General and "saviour" of the fatherland, administrator of the "last Prussian army in the world", as Pinochet, proud of his masterpiece, liked to say.
Outside, a few demonstrators invoked the ghost of communism and happily waved a few Chilean flags. More symbolically, there appeared in the foreground a flag with a black eagle and a swastika, the famous emblem of nazism. But inside the Military School, nothing was left to chance.
"Mission accomplished!," the outgoing Chief of Staff General Pinochet proclaimed to Chileans and the rest of the world, "Always the conqueror, never the conquered!" exclaimed the incomming commander in chief of the Chilean army, Ricardo Izurieta.
These emblematic phrases unambiguously reflect the history of Chile since 11 September 1973, when Augusto Pinochet sent tanks into the streets of Santiago, bombed La Moneda - the presidential palace — overthrew the radical President Salvadore Allende and imposed a terror that filled the prisons and sent thousands of Chileans to exile or death. Pinochet's paradoxes
After overthrowing the Unidad Popular government, persecuting, jailing and assassinating thousands of socialists, communists and other opponents of the dictatorship, Pinochet also drafted a constitution to suit his needs. Article 45 proclaims that "ex-presidents who have held the position for six consecutive years" will become senators for life. He has been the only one who fills this requirement.
Chilean history at the end of the century is filled with paradoxes. Perhaps the greatest is that the ex-dictator will spend his last years in the Congress, the same one that he shut down. From there, he will be able to show off his new democratic education and argue — for example — with the president of the Senate, Andres Zaldivar who he persecuted and exiled in 1981. This "luxury" can only permitted by a person who, for 17 years, governed at will and ordered the execution, burial and hiding of the cadavers of thousands of his opponents. This is a person who, at being informed that there were two cadavers ound in a grave, answered "but look,
Pinochet transformed Chile. And he wasn't overthrown by popular mobilisaions like Somoza in Nicaragua. Neither did he leave by the back door like Stroessmer in Paraguay. In Argentina, military officials had to leave the political scene after the defeat in the Malvinas (Falkland Islands). They were publicly humiliated in the "Trial of the Commanders." In Chile, after 25 years, Pinochet marches through the front door with all honours, and a party Pinochet's partial popularity
Although the 17 year dictatorship left Chilean society with deep wounds, it would be wrong to think that the overwhelming majority of Chileans are opposed to Pinochet occupying a seat in the Senate. In the first place, it must be remembered that Unidad Popular never had an absolute majority in the Congress between 1970 and 1973. Also, the Chilean right had a great capacity to mobilise, not only the middle and upper classes, but also some trade unions. This was a unique case in Latin America.
Secondly, macro-economic growth in Chile is real, as are the benefits from consumption, although income distribution is evermore unequal. This makes it possible to understand why the two principal rightist parties, Renovacion Nacional (RN) and the Union Democrata Independiente (UDI) have only two senators less than the centre-left government in the Senate. It also helps to explain how, on the same day as the ceremony in the Military School, an article — almost an editorial - entitled "Simply... Thank you!" could appear on page 2 of the most important Chilean daily newspaper, El Mercurio. Government failures
Pinochet didn't get to be a senator only on his own merit. The centre-left government allowed it. In power since 11 March 1990, the "Co-ordination for Democracy" led by Christian Democracy, the Socialist Party and the Party for Democracy, have always feared "awakening the ogre". In the name of a realism" that ended up being a sort of dogma, La Coordinación has always rejected any initiative that would involve street demonstrations or provoke the military apparatus.
The central argument was that this could weaken the "transition to democracy". With this logic, the Co-ordination accepted Pinochet's new Constitution, which provided for the existence of senators appointed at will and for "life", benefiting from immunity from prose-
The presence of the nine appointed senators and the one senator "for life", prevents the government party from gaining a majority in the Senate and thus, changing the Constitution.
The best person to explain this situation is the sociologist Tomas Moulian, author of the book Chile Today, Anatomy of a Myth," (1997) the first rigorous and serious analysis of Pinochet's regime. Moulian received this correspondent just hours after the ceremony in the Military School in his office on the first floor of the ARCIS University. A few blocks away, in the Alameda, the main avenue of Santiago, the police were still chasing demonstrators shouting anti-Pinochet slogans.
According to Moulian, "the ideological changes in the parties that comprise the Coordinación allowed them to adapt to the task of governing the society construc ted by the dictatorship. But they were also condemned to being the administrators of the social order inherited from Pinochet."
Moulin recognises that "struggling against a dictatorship that is successful in its class project and that has no scruples in its use of terror is a difficult endeavour."
However, he also adds that above and beyond the military regime's own influence, the ideological transformations of some leaders of the Coordinación mean that many of them now consider this transition to be the ideal and not a lesser evil.
"They changed the heads of power, but
" he adds. "The fundamental idea that leopards don't change their spots (gatopardismo) has been fulfilled: everything appears to have changed so that everything continues as it is."
After almost ten years of governing, the last attempts by the present government to prevent Pinochet from taking his place in the Senate in Valparaiso was more of a farce than a real political offensive.
Chile * Too little, too late
Having lived with Pinochet for ten years, a few of the deputies in the Co-ordination now proposed measures that would prevent Pinochet from taking a post in the Senate. Their attempts included constitutional accusations, proposing referendums to introduce reforms into the Constitution, juridical arguments that Pinochet had never been President of the Republic, but only the Chief of State, and requests for an inventory of his belongings. All of this, however, came too late La Coordinación in crisis
Although the last minute efforts to prevent Pinochet from taking a seat in the Senate were not successful, they did provoke a crisis within president Eduardo Frei's Christian Democracy party (DC), which is the main pillar of the Coordinación. At 11:00pm on the night of March 10, after a heated discussion, Frei's proposal to end the constitutional accusations against Pinochet was defeated by only one vote. The president argued that the accusations could affect the transition.
With the defeat of his proposal, Frei found himself more isolated than ever before. His party was divided, DC youth were in the streets of Santiago and Valparaiso shouting slogans against Pinochet and being repressed by the police, and the "senator for life" was voting in the Senate with the eyes of the world watching. Who represents the people?
All of this was happening in the framework of apathy and disdain that people feel toward the traditional political parties. By 10:00pm Monday night, the ratings war between the television soap operas mattered more than the ceremony taking place in the Military School.
It should be remembered that in the last elections, on 11 December 1997, one and a half Chileans did not register to vote, more than a million abstained, and another million nullified their vote or left the ballot blank.
A total of 700,000 votes were shared among the greens, the Communist Party and other smaller groups. In other words, almost 50% of all Chileans registered to vote do not have representation in Parlia-
Marta Lagos, a columnist for the Christian magazine Mensaje says that "this is a symptom of a democracy which has failed to transmit its most fundamental idea: that sovereignty rests with the people. This is the fate of civic illiteracy."
Twenty-five years of Pinochet have had profound consequences for Chilean society. The majority of those who at one time struggled against the dictatorship became worn out during the government
Perhaps a change will come with the youth that is now pouring out into the streets in protest - people who had not even been born in 1973. With a new generation comes a new hope. *
* Bangladesh - Chittagong Hill Tracts