Yes, She is Back

With a resounding throttling of her opponent in last Sunday’s runoff election in Chile, Michelle Bachelet confirmed what most observers pretty much knew; she will be President of Chile for the second time, taking over from Sebastian Piñera this coming March.  Winning 62% of the votes cast surely suggests broad support, especially since many suggested that anything over 55% would indicate a mandate for her program, but it also provides evidence of a very well prepared and implemented strategy to wrest the presidency away from the rightist coalition that supported Piñera.  To do so, Bachelet carefully and systematically inserted herself back into Chilean politics after a hiatus of four years, much of which was spent living in New York City and heading up the nascent UN Women program.

From the day she arrived back in Chile from New York, through the primary elections that put her firmly at the head of the “New Majority” ticket, the first round election in which she defeated the eight candidates convincingly but not enough to obtain the absolute majority necessary to avoid a runoff election, to last Sunday’s ho hum confirmation vote in which she not only held Evelyn Matthei to less than 40% of the votes but also added a few hundred thousands of voters to those who voted for her the first time, she built a solid case for why the voters should return her to the Presidency.

As the campaign signs began to appear again in the streets two weeks prior to the runoff election, a simple but telling distinction clearly defined the choice the voters were facing:  Bachelet stated clearly that she would provide Chileans with “A New Constitution”, “Quality and Free Education for all”, “Appropriate Pensions”, “More and Better Employment”, “More Green Areas”, “More Sports”, “Culture For All”, “More Police, More Security”… more everything, so much more that it began to be a bit ridiculous.  But at the end it worked. 

Matthei, on the other hand, desperate to appeal to additional independent centrist voters, adopted the oft borrowed and overused phrase “Si Se Puede”, Yes We Can, to which the voters responded “no you can’t”.  Two signs I saw just before the runoff election seemed to reflect well the juxtaposition the two candidates were offering:  Bachelet’s sign stated “No More Abuses” (referring to recent scandals of consumer and corporate fraud many Bachelet supporters claim are inherent in Chile’s free market, neoliberal economic model), right next to Matthei’s sign stating “Yes We Can”.  Surely the Bachelet sign was placed there last, but it seemed to sum up each candidate’s message all too well.

 So, what happens now?  Will the predictions of the Wall Street Journal types and the conservative right in Chile come true, that Bachelet will turn Chilean public policies significantly enough to the left to discourage private investment so necessary for Chile’s future growth?  Will she lead the country into a wrenching constitutional total rewrite process?  Will she carry out tax reform that results in economic de-stimulation?  Will she attempt to remove all private investment in the education sector, returning education to total government control?  In short, in her rush to do something significant about Chile’s unacceptable economic inequality will she throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater?

Or, will she move slowly and cautiously to remove from the constitution those elements that inhibit a more representational political system, to reform the tax system so she can change the way education is financed (inserting more public monies especially at the primary and secondary level), and to establish a government run pension system to compete with (and eventually replace?) the private system now in place?  One US-based academic who follows Chile very closely recently stated that there is nothing about Bachelet’s team that suggests significant changes, that rather than a shift to the left feared by some, she will orchestrate a move to the center, ultimately making Chile “about as Socialist as the US”.

Regardless of how one sees it evolving, the President Elect has successfully completed the easy part, and now her skills at governing, not campaigning, will be tested.  She has promised a lot, the world in fact, and she can in no way deliver all she has promised especially in the short term.  Admittedly, she did not offer many details about how she would go about implementing her program.  Many of her projects, if they are to result in “fundamental change” as she suggests (but which the commentator cited above does not believe), will take time.  Even though she seems to have the majorities she needs in the Congress to get the legislation required to do most of what she has offered, she is dependent upon legislative support of a very diverse coalition, from the Communists on the left to the Christian Democrats and Radicals in the center (maybe even center-right).  If she proceeds with grand, complex projects of constitutional, tax system, and education reform, she runs the risk of producing another “Transantiago”, or at least the appearance of one, and getting tied up in long, time consuming deliberations.  If she slowly attacks these problems, which by the way most Chileans do agree need reform of some form, in chewable bites she runs the risk of disappointing her support on the left end of the spectrum and will be challenged increasingly from civil society’s favorite forum, “The Street”.

I have a feeling, though, that the three big issues, a new constitution, free public education at all levels, and tax reform will soon be addressed one way or another, and that other issues, that have not received much attention in the campaigns, will soon become urgent issues for Bachelet’s attention:  energy policy, rights and roles of the indigenous people, environmental protection and its importance for the growing tourism industry, the effects of climate change on agriculture, forestry, and coastal development.

And of course, Chile’s relations with its neighbors need some attention.  Soon the International Court in The Hague will make public its response to Peru’s claim for adjustment of the maritime border between the two countries.  However this comes out, it will present a very delicate and potentially serious internal political and public opinion problem.  There is the Bolivian claim (dream) of access to the Pacific Ocean that will continue to irritate relations between the two countries.  Frankly, if you step back and view this issue with a broad lens, you would have to believe that a solution should be able to be found to this situation between two neighbors both of whom would greatly benefit from resolution of the issue and a more comprehensive bilateral cooperative relationship.  And Argentina, well, Bachelet and Kirchner seem to be able to get along, in spite of their differences, so that relationship should be friendly.  Hopefully both countries continue to work together to improve the transportation infrastructure and natural area preservation along the length of their common border, and that this most spectacular stretch of the Andes mountains becomes increasingly an attractive destination for lucrative nature-based tourism.

So, Bachelet has from now until March to name her team and craft her projects.  We will begin to have some clues as to how “fundamental” the changes she has promised will be as she names her Ministers of Hacienda (dismantle the free market “model” or stay the course), Interior (serious effort to deal with the needs and aspirations of the Mapuche), Foreign Affairs (Stay committed to the economic Pacific Alliance or revert to stronger economic relations with Brazil and the Mercosur), and Environment (strong promotion of natural area protection, rational water use, sustainable forest and fisheries development, strong, timely environmental impact assessments prior to development project decision-making, or a continuation of hands off laissez faire approaches to environmental protection).  An important issue is whether or not Bachelet continues to support an independent Central Bank.  If she backs off this, it would have to be classified as “significant change”.

Chile is heading into a period some on the inside predict will lead the country back to the “chaos of the late 1960s and early 1970s”, others believe this is precisely what the country needs to “erase the dark footprint of the military dictatorship and its economic model”.  Rising expectations and the inability of the Piñera government to satisfy these or even convince the majority of Chileans that he even wanted to satisfy their needs and desires led to his low popularity that spilled over negatively on the Matthei campaign.  Bachelet is facing an even higher level of expectations, especially from the poor and the middle class; much of this fervor for change has been fed by her own litany of campaign promises.  She has done very little to prepare the great majority of Chileans for the reality they will all face in March when she takes over the Presidency, the sacrifices some will have to make and the time it will take to deliver her program.  She does, however, have a keen ability to show her empathy for what the common folks are facing, so she will have something of a honeymoon period, but that could end very quickly when these same folks begin to sense that either she really didn’t mean to deliver everything she promised, or that she just isn’t able to deliver.

So let’s see who she picks to join her team.  I, for one, will be in Chile in March to witness her move back into La Moneda.  It will be interesting, for it starts what will surely be another very interesting time for Chile and Chileans.

In the meantime, Happy Holidays to all readers of DAVES CHILE blog.

Posted in Leesburg, Virginia on December 20,2013

Not The Tsunami She Wanted, But Almost

There was a chance that Michelle Bachelet would win Chile’s Presidential election outright in the November 17 round of voting.  In fact there was mention of an election “tsunami” from within her Nueva Mayoría team of advisors, who, besides running what most observers term an errorless campaign, exuded confidence she could win the required majority-plus-one votes against Evelyn Matthei of the right wing Alianza (and 7 other candidates) to avoid a runoff election.  But even though she came close, that did not happen.  She received 46.7% of the votes to Matthei’s 25%, so the two will spend another month campaigning. Bachelet clearly won big, so she only needs to keep her supporters interested enough to return to the polls on December 15, and gather enough additional votes from people who supported the secondary candidates, to maintain her distance from Matthei.  None of these losing candidates has promised to support her and deliver votes of their supporters to her cause, and since she is not in serious need of cutting a deal with any of these candidates to defend her victory in the second round, she will not offer any of them much to join her effort.  

Matthei, on the other hand, must devise a strategy that significantly attracts an additional block of voters to catch up to Bachelet’s comfortable lead, which most observers feel is highly unlikely. One might think that, since only about 50% of the qualified voters actually cast votes in the election, there should be fertile ground “out there” to entice new voters to get in the game and participate in the runoff election.  Difficult, but not out of the question, so Matthei has changed here team to include younger members of her coalition, some who won congressional seats in the first round election and hence have proven access and acceptability to important populations of voters.  But can she change her message to one that convinces enough voters that she and her cohort care as much about normal Chileans and their struggles to feed, house, educate, and keep healthy their families.  Bachelet has done that, but Matthei has not.

So what is likely to happen is that Bachelet will keep her campaign staff in place (why change a winning team, after all!), but try to reach further into the large group of Chileans who did not vote in the first round; skewed towards the young, the poor, and the self-proclaimed “disaffected”, the “indignados”, some of whom just might shelve their skepticism temporarily and join the parade in support of her program of free education for all, tax reform to produce the additional resources needed for this educational reform as well as much needed improvements to the public health system, and a new constitution freed of the trappings of the present constitution that originated in the Pinochet dictatorship.

The Presidential election is only half the story (well, maybe three quarters).  On November 17, Chilean voters also elected Senators to the upper house (Senate), and Deputies to the lower house (Chamber) of what they call their Parliament (Legislature).  If Bachelet is to be successful at implementing her reform-rich program, she will need support in the legislative branch, and this election gave her a majority in both houses.  Candidates from the parties making up Bachelet’s campaign coalition will hold 21 seats in the Senate compared to 16 from the opposition; in the House they will hold a 67 to 49 advantage.  This balance (or unbalance, if you wish), should allow Bachelet to win legislative approval for most of the programs and reforms she has campaigned on, although many of these are still very highly generalized and lacking in a fair, detailed assessment of the costs and benefits (monetary and social) associated with each.

One aspect of the “Pinochet” constitution that is attracting a lot of attention and much criticism from a wide range of constitutionalists, politicians, and segments of civil society is what is referred to as “special quorums”.  These apply with certain types of legislative proposals that require more than a majority vote to pass; some require 60% and others, such as constitutional reforms, require 75%.  It is this latter special quorum that is complicating Bachelet’s campaign promise to create a “new constitution”, because it would allow the opposition to vote en bloc against her proposals for reform.  (Observers of the gridlocked US Congress are all too familiar with this tool of power afforded to the minority to stymie, for better or for worse, the will of the majority.) While it is not a given that the right wing minority would object to any and all constitutional reforms requiring this level of approval, it is certainly likely.  Hence, believing that this special quorum of 75% is a trap that will inevitably lead to failure of Bachelet to produce a new constitution using the present institutional framework (legislative branch), and in the process preclude her from eliminating these special quorums from the constitution, there is an outcry from a broad range of the Chilean public for an alternative approach, the creation of a “constituent assembly”, to draw up Bachelet’s new constitution.

Matthei and the right parties have been roundly defeated in this election, so far.  The right is not as coherent and disciplined politically as the left, and under Bachelet’s guiding hand the left coalition formed to obtain Bachelet’s election has become more inclusive by welcoming the Communist Party into the coalition while keeping the more centrist Christian Democrats also in house.  It is one thing for a party like the Communists to join the campaign, but another to join her government once she is elected.  It is pretty clear that this time, differing from the first time she was President, Bachelet will form her government with less of a need to succumb to influence from the leadership of the political parties who supported her campaign.  (Polls show that while Bachelet is popular, the political parties that support her are not.) Bachelet probably has her government pretty much staffed and first steps planned, but some observers believe that because of this second round of voting there is still room for Matthei and her Alianza supporters to influence how and with whom Bachelet eventually governs.  This is more apt to occur if Matthei is able to challenge Bachelet's proposed program enough to seed doubts about its effects, and its eventual costs.  There will be at least one face-to-face debate, something that did not effectively happen in the first round, so Matthei has at least that chance to show to the voting public (and the previous non-voting public) what she and the right think are the serious shortfalls of Bachelet's program.

A strong showing in the runoff by Matthei, which would require expanding her vote count considerably, might temper how Bachelet interprets her mandate and influence her choices when she finally names her team to govern and determines her priorities.  On the other hand, a weak showing by the right could result in an even more overwhelming victory in the runoff election and leave Bachelet with the even greater feeling that she has won a clear mandate for her program, and can proceed unfettered. 

One interesting and indicative decision Bachelet made almost immediately after winning the first round election was to enlist the support of four attractive young victors of seats in the Chamber of Deputies to join her in public campaign events.  These are the very attractive past leaders of the student movement, who took to the streets over the past two years to force politicians and public opinion to pay attention to important social issues like education, health care, and equity of opportunity and wealth which have been begging for attention and reform for years.  These leaders of the future campaigned under Bachelet's Nueva Mayoría banner and having parlayed their popularity into electoral victory will join the Chamber of Deputies in March, bringing fresh energy to that often stodgy body.  Three of them have joined the Communist Party, and as such the Party has doubled the seats it holds in that body from 3 members to 6.  These former student protest leaders all were once vociferous critics of Bachelet, and even now openly proclaim that they are joining the legislative branch initially within her coalition, but with only one foot, while the other they are keeping in the street with their comrades of the civil social movement.  Time will tell if they drink Bachelet’s Kool Aid, or she drinks theirs.  It also remains to be seen how independent of their party these young legislators will be.

So are Chileans turning their backs on the policies and practices that have given the country economic progress for the past two plus decades?  Are the Chilean voters indifferent to what it will take to fulfill the recently released OECD projection that Chile’s will be the most dynamic economy in the biennium 2014-15 of all the 34 members of this club of developed and emerging economies?  Will Bachelet, in her drive to make Chile a more “just and equitable” society still be able to deliver economic growth of 4.5% in 2014 and 4.9% in 2015 as projected by the OECD analysts?  To put this in context, compare these numbers to projections for the US (2.9% and 3.4%) or the EU (1.0% and 1.6%).  Some local analysts and commentators are drawing the conclusion that this election may be showing that Chileans are as interested in social growth (equity, participation, environmental health) as they are in economic growth, and while they may still want growth, they are willing for that rate of aggregate growth to be slower than it has been, if by slowing down and limiting the excesses and abuses of their relatively free market economy they can attend to some of their social needs better.

In some ways it all looks a lot like Chile in 1970, when the Allende government raced to socialize the Chilean economy and society, self destructing (with a lot of help from the opposition and other enemies) with the resultant calamity the results of which still infect Chilean society and politics.  This is the outcome of a Bachelet victory that the likes of the Wall Street Journal and other conservative analysts are predicting (or fearing).  But it also looks a lot like Bachelet may in a way be Chile’s Barack Obama.  The reform wave she is riding feels a lot like the vibes around Obama’s victory in 2008.  Even her speeches sound a bit like his, and her endless promises while exciting, add up to an impossible agenda her inability for whatever reason to implement run the risk of leading to high levels of disappointment (like Obama also).  Admittedly, Obama was not proposing the drafting of a new constitution like she is, nor was he a self-defined Socialist like she is. 

 For Chile’s sake, one can only hope that Bachelet is more capable of setting realistic priorities, corralling her supporters to her side consistently to promote and implement her program, and that the Chilean legislative branch can avoid the costly, divisive partisan gridlock Obama has faced for his entire time in office.

But wait…our work is not done here.  No summary and no conclusions quite yet.  There is more campaigning, another vote on the 15^th of December, and a government to form in March of 2014.  Let’s keep watching.  These Chileans are truly quite entertaining as they struggle to rebuild an economy, a society, and a democracy.

Viva Chile.

 

Posted in Santiago, Chile on November 20,2013

Beef comes from the Jumbo!!

Several months ago I was having a discussion with Agustin, Ximena’s loquacious 6-year old nephew, about a barbeque he had been at the prior weekend, when he surprised me with his claim that he did not eat roast lamb “because it comes from a live animal”.  Well, I know he loves grilled steaks, as do most Chileans, so to get to pursue this apparent contradiction I asked him “But, Agu, where does beef come from?”  “El Jumbo!” he replied.  Right, lamb from a live animal but beef from the supermarket.  Unwittingly Agu was reflecting the disconnect between 21^st century urban dwellers, and the reality of our sources of food.

This disconnect is becoming more and more common to be sure, and it will grow in Chile unless the printed press and other public opinion media inform the public better of the challenges of agriculture development and the provision of safe, nourishing and reasonably affordable food .  One notable source of information on agriculture and food in Chile is the weekly Revista del Campo published in the newspaper El Mercurio.  Consistent with other parts of the world, agriculture development issues get headlines in Chile only when there is a drought, flood, or pest that significantly affects the price and availability of food.  True to that, the recent unusually late period of freezing weather in the Chilean central valley should be reminding policy makers, politicians, and the public how vulnerable their food production system is to the vagaries of the weather and the process of climate change.

As much as 68% of the fruit production may have been affected by the freeze (not necessarily lost, but to some degree affected), and producers and exporters are awaiting a response from the government with actions to minimize the negative effects on exports and farm and agribusiness labor.  The government has the resources to provide financial support to farmers who lost this years production, especially in the fruit sector, so they can get through to the next production cycle.  Temporary labor without work in the more northern regions will probably find work further south where the freeze was not as destructive and where farm labor is often in shortage.  But, this will not be the last time weather causes agriculture losses, and the progressive effects of climate change require more aggressive attention to the changing panorama of what crops can be planted and where they will grow best.  Just like certain field crops like soybeans and wheat are being planted progressively further north in the US, so is the grape industry in Chile moving into new areas of the country because of changes in climate and the availability of water.

So why is this important?  Only fifty years ago Chile embarked on an intensive agrarian reform, the first step in a process that over the years has resulted in Chile becoming a global player in forest products, fresh fruit and vegetables, specialty food products, fish and seafood.  Throughout this period policies were reformed that freed up imports and exports and that directed capital to the agriculture sector.  Important institutions were created to support and promote the sector;  INDAP to provide assistance to the small and medium sized farming sector, CORFO to provide investment for innovative sector projects often in partnership with the World Bank and InterAmerican Bank, and the Fundacion Chile, a semi-autonomous research and development institution set up to promote public-private investments some of which led to the highly sophisticated processing and marketing of Chile's agriculture and food products capable of competing well on the global market.  Throughout the process Chile's universities, public sector institutions, and the private sector all developed strong links with US institutions, especially in California where similar crops (grapes and other fruits) and similar challenges (scarce water, increasing land values, changing demand for agriculture sector expertise and research) contributed to modernization of the sector and establishment of long term partnerships and technology-sharing networks beneficial to both countries.

Over the past two decades, Chile's agriculture exports have grown faster than imports, with recent growth especially in dairy, pork, and poultry in addition to the traditionally strong exports of wood products, wine, and fresh fruits. 

Because of this progress, recent Chilean leaders are convinced that Chile should be a "world level agrifood producer".  To support this, President Pinera is sending to the Chilean Congress a proposal for legislation to reconform the Ministry of Agriculture as the new Ministry of Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and Forest Resources. He states that the country could move up into the top 10 of global food producers, demonstrating a degree of ambition and confidence really quite noteworthy.  But it will not happen without a high level of attention from Chile's future leaders. 

Several days ago, as the size of the damage from the freeze was becoming clearer, the candidates in this year's presidential election met in the northern city of Coquimbo for a public debate.   The debate was set up to focus for the most part on regional issues.  It will not escape most who are reading this blog that in a Country like Chile, where about half the population lives in the capital city, and 75-80% are urban dwellers, there is no greater “regional” issue than the growing of food and fiber, and the provision of bioenergy (mostly fuel) in the rural regions from Coquimbo in the north to the Bio Bio in the south, to satisfy the growing demands of the urban population and for export.  But, not one of the candidates even mentioned the issues of agriculture, food and wood production, rural development in general, or even issues related to water and irrigation.  This latter omission is most noteworthy because it is precisely the region between Santiago and Coquimbo (the 4^th and 5^th Regions) where future agriculture development depends on expansion of the irrigation systems, and the availability of abundant water, a huge issue due to several years of drought conditions leading to deficits in all the major water reservoirs in this part of Chile.

You could expect one of the presidential candidates, Michelle Bachelet, to be right on top of the issues of agriculture and food, especially fruit production. Bachelet’s ancestors included pioneers in Chilean agriculture.  Her paternal great-great-grandfather, Luis Bachelet, in 1876 authored a seminal document on the art of cultivating vineyards in Chile entitled “Guia; Vinicultor Chileno”.  He also reportedly brought to Chile some of the first root stock of French grape varieties now the backbone of the Chilean wine industry. 

During a visit I made to the agriculture school of the Universidad de Chile, on the outskirts of Santiago, the dean, Antonio Lizana (whom I had met many years before in Cairo, Egypt, where he was working on an agriculture development project and I an environmental policy project, both funded by USAID), showed me the bust of Bachelet’s maternal grandfather, Max Jeria, that they have set at the entrance to the administration building of the school to note that he was the first Ingeniero Agronomo (agronomist) to graduate from the university.  Antonio also provided me with a copy of Jeria's 1876 publication that I admittedly have yet to read.

With her genes deeply rooted in Chilean agriculture you would think granddaughter Michelle would be steeped in the problematic of rural development and agriculture.  Well, as it turns out, Michelle Bachelet did not attend the debate in Coquimbo last week, so unfortunately her views and positions were not in the mix.  Maybe we will hear more on the subject of agriculture and food production from her and other leading presidential candidates next week when they are invited to speak at the annual meeting of the National Agriculture Society (SNA).  It will be a timely event to gauge the degree to which the next generation of Chilean leaders understands the links between agriculture, the growing global demand for food, the effects of climate change, and the requirements for technological innovation through modern research and education institutions.  If they understand this, they are more apt to attend to the requirements of a modern agriculture sector and accelerated rural development in general.

With the recent climate related emergency in the agriculture sector still fresh in their minds, a serious discussion is needed to detail the national policies and programs required to face the effects of climate change and increased global and national demand for the very foods that Chile produces and exports with excellence.  Chile has always been linked to US and other countries to stay up to date on productivity enhancing technologies, but the public research institutions will need resources and trained professionals to keep Chile's agriculture growing, especially in the face of the complexities of climate change.

Strong presidential leadership is needed now, leadership that knows that beef gets to the Jumbo for Agustin's barbeques only because a modern agriculture invests, produces, harvests, delivers, and profits from working the land, conserving water, and growing the economies of rural towns and villages.

Posted in Santiago, Chile on 10-19-2013.

 

Chile's Election; Down to the Wire

 

We are just a few short days away from the presidential elections in Chile, and most observers are convinced Michelle Bachelet will win large. Her main opponent, Evelyn Matthei, is around 20 percentage points behind in most polls.  There are nine candidates from across the political spectrum vying for the position, since it is so easy to collect the number of signatures (50,000) required to qualify to be on the national ballot. One observer commented recently that a couple of the candidates may actually receive fewer votes in the election than signatures they collected to enter the race! Because of this plethora of candidates splitting the total vote, Bachelet may not receive the “majority plus one” of total valid votes required to win in the first round and thus avoid a runoff election between the two top vote earners. In the case that a second round is needed, it would be held one month after the first, in mid-December, with Bachelet, member of the Socialist Party and supported in the campaign by the modified “Concertación” movement she named “Nueva Mayoría” face-to-face with Matthei, supported by the same right of center coalition, the Alianza, that supports the present and outgoing president Sebastián Piñera.

As the campaign has progressed over the past few weeks, the positions taken and the personality of campaigns of the two leading candidates present a clear choice to the voters.  On the one hand, Matthei has carried water for the proponents of the position that Chile has progressed remarkably, albeit not perfectly, towards “developed” status after 24 years of gradual escape from the institutions (and lack thereof) left by the Pinochet dictatorship. Matthei points out stridently that this progress must not be impeded by drastic public policy changes that could threaten this pace of development.  Supporting this position are the results of recent polls and analyses from respected Chilean and international institutions. More than 70% of Chileans believe Chile is the best country in which to live in Latin America (Encuesta Bicentenario). Freedom House classifies Chile as fully democratic since 2000. In terms of human development indicated by life expectancy (longest in Latin America with 78.2 years, about the same as the US), Infant mortality at 9 per 1,000, education, literacy and quality of life, Chile is ranked 40 of 183 countries and the highest of all Latin American countries. To wit, obesity is more of a problem than malnourishment.  Unemployment is at its lowest level in 30 years and GDP per capita at its highest, just short of US$ 20,000.  The IMF believes the most optimistic scenarios for economic performance over the near future in Latin America are in Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Mexico (countries which, by the way, are joined in a “Pacific alliance” formed recently to enhance their trade position with the very attractive and growing Asian markets).

On the other hand, Bachelet has clearly crafted her campaign to sync with the opinions of Chileans as reflected in recent public opinion polling that, surprising to some given the situation just described and touted by Matthei, reflects a significant desire to move away from private sector and market solutions especially where “social rights” are involved.  85% of those polled want to reduce salary inequality, 67% support tax reform, usually meaning increase taxes on companies and the rich, 81% believe a government-run retirement fund should be established to compete with the private programs to reduce the costs (read profits) earned by the private funds, 74% agree that university education should be free and universal, 80% are in favor of renationalizing the copper industry, 82% support the creation of a network of public pharmacies, 70% want the government to take over the public transportation system.

The underlying issue is equality.

Bachelet surely respects the economic growth Chile has experienced over the past two decades, but she wants to give more importance to distribution of wealth, not just total growth and per capita averages. (She probably keeps in the front of her mind the classic calculation: Two brothers have two chickens for dinner; one eats both, the other none.  Per capita consumption of chicken: one chicken per brother!).    And on top of this equity issue, or maybe because of it, there is a strong push from many different levels of Chilean society to adopt a new constitution to rid the country of the constitution forced through by the Dictatorship but subsequently amended in a new version signed by then President Ricardo Lagos in 2005. 

The option of forming a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution has been a burning issue during this campaign.  It is an idea that gets most of its support from Chileans who seem driven to erase everything created by the Pinochet dictatorship and by those who see the process of developing a new constitution as a way to bring broad sectors of society, who feel they have been left out and are not represented in today’s decision-making institutions, into the discussion on the future of their country.  Bachelet firmly supports a new constitution, and has not discarded the idea of a constituent assembly.  As with many of her statements and the program she has made public so far, it is hard to tell how far she would actually go to produce a complex, new constitution. At times she appears to be allergic to a constituent assembly, probably the case because the process surely would dominate her entire time in office and possibly not even produce a new constitution.  

Matthei, on the other hand, is openly opposed to calling a constituent assembly, believing it to be a dangerous proposal, even destabilizing, and that it is also unnecessary in that the specific changes needed in the constitution should be debated and agreed upon within the existing institutions established to do just that, especially the Congress.

The campaigns so far have not addressed how Chile will continue its march towards the next level of development.  Chile is a member of the OECD (along with Mexico the only Latin American members), but it, along with Mexico and Turkey, is not an industrialized country, making comparisons of socio-economic data with other OECD countries tricky. Chile still relies heavily on income from the mining sector, especially copper.  The outlook for the price of copper, now high but with a tendency to decrease below US$ 3.00 per pound, puts Chile’s economy at risk.  One viable option to decrease the dependency on copper is to shift investment from the mining sector slowly towards forest products, fisheries, fresh fruits and vegetables, and wine, the sectors which have begun to show some degree of efficiency and competitiveness in the world market.  These sectors suffer from the high cost of energy, increasing labor scarcity, and years of indifference to environmental protection of basic natural resources of soil and water.  Neither of the two leading candidates has put forward any specifics nor even shown any indication to be concerned about the investments in education, research, and innovation necessary to continue the modernization of these productive sectors and the addition of new areas of production.  The best example of this is the agri-food sector, where Chile actually has advanced over the recent decade and is potentially a globally important exporter of agriculture products.  However, when the candidates were invited recently to an important annual symposium on Chile’s place in the global agriculture and food economy, not one of the candidates chose to participate.

So as we move to the election with the general feeling that Bachelet will eventually be elected president, with a large margin if she wins in the first round, and probably an even larger margin if they have to go to a second round, the issue now really becomes how she will govern and what happens to the right wing coalition.  It is interesting to note that were a president in the US to win by the margin being projected for Bachelet, it would be termed a very strong mandate for the program being put forward. To a certain degree, the simultaneous congressional elections of senators and deputies will determine the extent Bachelet can govern with support from her coalition to pass legislation.  She seems very close to having that outcome, but these elections are harder to predict.  Another important factor is that at this point, that is, for the campaign, Bachelet is bookended within her coalition by the Communist Party on the left and the Christian Democrat Party on the right.  If she moves too close to the business sector and too slowly on reforms of the tax structure and the health and education sectors,  Communists will rebel; in fact, it still remains to be seen if they will actually join her government.  At any rate, they will have several seats in Congress.  If she moves too far left, especially on certain social issues like same sex marriage and abortion, the Christian Democrats will push back. 

But the elephant in the room, the first and possibly the biggest issue Bachelet will have to deal with that could determine how successful her presidency is, is the issue of forming a constituent assembly to prepare a new constitution.  If she is forced into a constituent assembly-type process by her own party, the Socialists, she will have a very difficult time fulfilling the promises she has made to improve significantly the health and education systems, deal with the Mapuche and other indigenous populations' claims, and develop a national energy policy which addresses the rapidly increasing costs of energy in Chile. 

The right wing Alianza will come out of this election soundly defeated, by Bachelet and by themselves. Bachelet’s coalition is much more disciplined than that of Matthei.  That may not hold past the campaign, but the difference between the two is noteworthy. I heard an interesting comment recently that Piñera had a pretty good presidency but he was a bad president.  And Bachelet had a pretty mediocre presidency (2006-2010) but she was a good president.  I’m not sure who coined this idea initially, but it does seem to come down to the “poetry” and “prose” of running public affairs.  One has to do with running the government (prose) and the other with understanding your people, connecting with the people who have unmet aspirations and needs, and projecting the feeling that you share the ups and downs of daily life of those whose lives are not easy and often precarious. (poetry)  Piñera had little poetry, and Matthei has even less.  To be fair, the right wing coalition in Chile has really only governed for 4 years since 1964, compared to 26 for the left.  The right now has a newly formed reservoir of talent versed and experienced in the nuts and bolts of governance, and new leaders with more finely honed political skills are now available.  My guess is that the temptation for these folks, as they watch their TVs Sunday night, will be (if they haven’t been doing so already) to grab the phone, line up a job in the private sector, maybe overseas as so many talented Chileans do, and bail from the political scene at least for a while.  Maybe.  But maybe not, and if not, the right will be better ready for another chance in the near future to get back in the game.  Bachelet’s well-orchestrated poetry will be a big reason for her winning this election, as is expected, but she will need to deliver the prose of governance much better than she did the last time, or she will again, in four years, deliver the country to the opposition.

Posted in Santiago, Chile, on November 13, 2013. 

Chile's Presidential Election; Heating Up!!



Only 40 days to go before Chileans elect a new president, and there are a few signs of the upcoming presidential election, refreshingly few compared to the maddening overkill of election propaganda that precedes elections in the US by tediously long months. The first candidate sign I saw was along the ciclovia where I walk each morning, for Michelle Bachelet, the candidate of the “Nueva Mayoría” movement she has organized for her campaign.  Then, several blocks away there was a sign for Laurence Golborne, who was an early candidate for the presidential nomination of the right-wing coalition, the Alianza, but he ran into trouble with some of his past business and personal finance acrobatics, and had to desist.  However, he is a relatively attractive, popular, and young politician, so he quickly got back in the game and is now running for a Senate seat and could ultimately become a player in the congress if, of course, he wins.  You may remember him as the ever-present Minister of Mining who oversaw the rescue of the 33 men trapped in a mine in northern Chile a couple of years back. 

After walking around a bit I finally found a large sign for Bachelet’s opponent, Evelyn Matthei, whose theme Un 7 Para Chile invokes the maximum grade students can earn in Chilean schools….a 7.  Alongside her sign was one for Andres Allamand, a center-right politician who tried to become the presidential candidate for the right wing Alianza coalition, but failed, so he is also running for Senator.  The candidate who beat him for the nomination was diagnosed shortly after with clinical depression, and also desisted, leaving the field open for the party leaders of the Alianza to choose  their candidate to run against Bachelet (and several others), and they chose Matthei.

But the campaigns for president and congress, like the weather in Santiago, are heating up.  The major candidates are slowly releasing their specific programs, initially focusing on the themes that were brought to the front (via the streets) over the past months especially by the series of student strikes, protests, and takeovers of schools (tomas).  The most passionate discussions are over the way education and health services should be financed (public vs. Private, free vs. subsidized), and whether the actual constitution (written during the military dictatorship and amended during the center-left Concertación administration of Ricardo Lagos) should be reformed/amended/modified via institutional processes or a constituent assembly.  There are 7 candidates for president in addition to Bachelet and Matthei, and in some ways these other candidates are more interesting in that many represent the next generation of Chilean politicians and refreshingly new political thought; they are more forward looking than either Bachelet or Matthei both of whom are seriously steeped in the past, a past many Chileans would like to move on from.

Moving on from some of the darker and more controversial periods in Chile’s recent history (let’s say, the last 45 years) is proving difficult. Many Chileans (and Chile watchers) appear to believe the only history of Chile worth considering began in 1973 with the golpe; others choose a starting point of 1970 with the election of the Socialist, self-described Marxist Salvador Allende; and others (myself included) rather prefer to see the modern history of Chile beginning with the election of Eduardo Frei Montalva in 1964, starting a period of progressive but destabilizing social and economic reforms much in concert with the Alliance for Progress and which directly challenged the power of the rightist, conservative, land owning minority who had arranged things nicely for themselves up to this point.  

Our arrival in Chile this time coincided with a significant increase in the level of public analysis of the golpe that led to the Pinochet military dictatorship, and to a degree, the Unidad Popular government of Allende (1970-73) that preceded (and led to) the golpe.  The series of celebrations and memorials held this year to note the 40th anniversary of the golpe (September 11) and the 15th anniversary of the NO plebiscite which confirmed the end of the dictatorship (October 5), uncorked a pent up need for deeper analysis and reflection on the meaning of these two events that so drastically changed the course of Chilean history.  Certainly one reason for this national catharsis is the political and historical juxtaposition of the two major presidential candidates, but another reason so much is being said about who did what and why during this period when Chile experimented with socialism and lost its hold on democratic government, I suggest, is that many of the major actors in the Allende and Pinochet governments, and the Concertacion governments who guided the transition from military dictatorship to democratic governance, are reaching a ripe old age where they are concerned about how history will judge them.  So they are helping history (while they can still remember what they did or wished they had done) by writing books describing all the challenges they faced, the hardships they persevered, the risks they took to take Chile in the right direction in the face of great opposition and personal sacrifice, all the while making sure to place a lot of the blame for what happened on the US and other outsiders meddling in Chile during the cold war. This period of pre-election reflection has definitely heated things up as the political campaigns now take off.

One way to look at the presidential election options in a general enough way so as to avoid getting bogged down in details, is in terms of how the candidates feel about the socio-economic-political “model” all administrations including and subsequent to the military dictatorship have applied for the last 25 to 30 years. This “model”, originating inside the Pinochet government and delineated in the constitution they wrote to guide Chile from then on, and then modified during the Lagos regime to eliminate some of the more egregious un-democratic, authoritarian clauses, to this day essentially defines socio-economic Chile as having a subsidiary State with utmost economic freedom, unrestricted private property, privatization of education, and limitations on social rights and political participation.  Basically, the present constitution establishes a market economy for the country and defines the institutions which ensure the continuation of this “model”.

Ex-president Bachelet governed Chile from 2006 to 2010 without seriously challenging this “model”; she wanted to make significant inroads in the health and other social sectors, but tried to do so without negatively affecting the economic model  she and her three elected predecessors inherited from the dictatorship.  Her concerns this time around, however, seem to be broader and she has stated that she is more willing to consider significant changes to the constitution that would lead to more political participation (larger congress with broader representation), and elimination of election processes that are favorable to the minority (bi-nominal election process, congressional voting processes that allow minority veto of initiatives). To make these changes she is willing to consider a constituent assembly to do so, an idea that reminds many wary Chileans of the type of populist politics recently practiced in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, none of which most Chileans admire.

Bachelet is skating towards the election on the thin ice of her extremely broad coalition, unable to present concrete proposals for her administration because she must satisfy everyone from the Communist Party on the left, to the Christian Democrats who often position themselves in the very uncomfortable center right (especially on social issues like abortion and same sex marriage).  She is, therefore, in her public appearances and in the press, relying heavily on her down-to-earth personality, accessible and sympathetic, to appear open to the desires and needs of everyone, while not being too specific as to how she would satisfy so many demands.  Because of her soft touch delivery, people who listen to her walk away with the idea that she is to be trusted to give them what they want, without her having said precisely that.  In the face to harsh demands by the press and her opposition for a clearer and more specific program for her government should she be elected, she has promised to provide just such a document during the last week in October.  She claims, however, that there is virtue in locking herself in to a detailed set of promises now, since she is "still listening and consulting with everyone"; she believes a good leader is always ready to change course if a new, better idea pops up.

Matthei, on the other hand, is clearly more supportive of the “model”, while allowing that some changes  may be necessary to provide broader political participation in decision making but she is really not too excited about that either. She certainly is not interested in a constituent assembly to make changes to the constitution, believing any required changes can be made via normal institutional processes.  Her campaign has released a specific program for her future government, that focuses on measures to strengthen public security and ensure continued economic growth through establishment of clearer “rules of the game” and hence stability for investors, producers, consumers, and borrowers.  She would strengthen government transparency and supports more aggressive efforts to eliminate tax evasion and avoidance, but does not propose tax reform per se.  She believes the tax and constitutional reform proposals Bachelet has made would seriously weaken the economy.  She suggests that Chile should be looking to Finland and other Nordic countries for socio economic policies to emulate.

Right now most analysts and the "Chilean Street" are predicting Bachelet will win with a plurality of votes in the first round, in which case a runoff election would not be necessary.  However, the proliferation of candidates most of whom will take votes away from Bachelet not Matthei, could force the second round.  And, it is not entirely clear what the effect will be of the fact that this is the first presidential election held since the election law was changed to have automatic registration to vote but allow  voting to be voluntary. (In the past, Chileans had to register to vote, but then voting was required).

I have heard the view that the real issue now is not who will win, but how Bachelet decides to win, and how Mattei decides to lose.  To me it is what I imagine an election would look like between Barack Obama and Margaret Thatcher.  Although now that I think about it, maybe more like Hillary Clinton and Margaret Thatcher (although Michelle smiles more than Hillary, and Evelyn more than Margaret did!).

As I was walking home last evening from a discussion with a history professor from the Universidad Catolica who is doing research on the Peace Corps, I decided to pass by Avenida Suecia where the Peace Corps office was when my group of volunteers was in Chile in the late 1960s.  This trendy Providencia neighborhood that had classic mansions on tree-lined streets at that time has been turned into an area of high rise office and apartment buildings, so I was surprised to find that the old house that was the Peace Corps office is still there, painted entirely white and just as stately as I remember it.  Ironically, however, it now houses the national headquarters of the far right UDI  party, Matthei's party, and her campaign headquarters has been established right across the street.  Must be something seeping out of the walls of that house that make those who enter feel strongly about Chile and its development.

House on Avenida Suecia in Santiago where Peace Corps Headquarters was in 1960s

 

One more small election anecdote...remember Camila Vallejos, the attractive firebrand student leader who led the first student protests and strikes a couple of years ago which turned into an almost permanent student protest movement in opposition to the Pinera government and "the Model", who travelled around the world electrifying leftists everywhere and ended up being featured in favorable articles in the Economist and the New York Times?  Well, she is firmly ensconced in the communist party, is running for a deputy slot in the national Camara (like the US House of Representatives) from the La Florida neighborhood of Santiago, and has just had a healthy baby girl.  She is as active and attractive as ever.

Stay tuned....more to come.

Posted in Santiago on October 9, 2013.

 
 

Santiago Today

 

It’s curious, but I can begin to sense Chile well before I actually arrive.  Equally curious is the persistent independent bent of Chileans, in full form when travelling.  Assignment of specific seats on our airplane are taken by many of my fellow travelers as “suggested”, the polite urging by the pilot to “please take your seat” seems to apply only to some of the passengers (apparently just the “gringos”, meaning north Americans and most Europeans except Italians and Greeks!), and the fasten seat belt sign, when translated from English to Spanish, must come across as optional, a sort of “last call” announcement stimulating a rush by some to take down carry-on bags from the overhead compartment (where they were just deposited 5 minutes ago) to take out something very important, and by others a scramble back several rows to again say something to a travelling partner who is seated separately because at the last minute, which is when most made their arrangements, there were no longer any seats together.

Of course the most convincing Chile alert is the high-pitched chorus of “weón”, “wea”, and increasingly “weona”, cementing the reality that, in fact, we are on our way to Chile.

Santiago and Andes Mountains

Arriving these days at the international airport in Santiago is apt to test your patience, especially after the 9 or 10 hour flight from the US.  Chile is experiencing an incredible increase in air travel; the number of foreigners travelling to Chile on business and for tourism, and Chileans travelling within Chile and internationally has outpaced the airport infrastructure, so the lines to pass through International police and even to pay for products purchased in the duty free store are now terribly long, especially in the morning when many of the international flights arrive. Only a couple of years back this was not the case, but the demands of Chile’s relative prosperity continue to outpace projections of the infrastructure required.  

Corner of Pedro de Valdivia and Bilbao Avenues in Santiago

But on the other hand, a more important sign that we have arrived in Chile is the pleasant, while efficient, personal treatment with which the mostly young Chilean immigration and customs officials welcome us.  Compared to the characteristically uncivil verbal “roughing up” travelers are getting from “security” agents in US ports of exit/entry, the difference is noteworthy.  Chileans are still a very welcoming bunch…and polite.

We arrived in Chile to find Santiago under a guata de burro (donkey’s belly) sky, grey and cold but not rainy.  It is, after all, early spring in Chile, a time of year when we are not usually here, preferring the warmer summer months of January through April.  But everyone reassured us that it would be warming up soon.  They were right, but not before a week of night-time zero degree (C) temperatures which unfortunately produced a freeze and icing in the fruit growing regions of the central valley of the country, possibly affecting as much as 65% of the flowering at the time.  If it has to be something, let it be the pears and apples, hopefully not the wine grapes.

I love arriving at our place in Santiago, to take the pulse of this vibrant city and to go through the ritual celebratory first activities of arrival.  This time, I notice that traffic is more congested than I remember even from last year, as more and more Chileans own bigger, newer, and more expensive cars, stretching the limits of the urban infrastructure, complicated by the problems and inefficiencies of the public transport system, the infamous “Transantiago”, which in constant reform and benefiting from a permanent and high subsidy, continues to disappoint.   The drivers of all these cars are paying about $US 1.50 per litre of gasoline, about 50% higher than what we pay in the US; I'm not sure how they do it, since at the same time Chile's GDP per capita, while highest for a Latin American country, is only around $US 14,000.  A recent survey claims that 18% of a Chilean family's monthly expenditures is for food, 16% for transportation, and 20% for housing.

$US 1 = 500 Chilean Pesos

A consequence of the high cost of gasoline and traffic congestion is that the bicycle has been rediscovered.  I say rediscovered because it (along with the horse) was the most common mode of transportation in rural Chile when I first arrived over 45 years ago.  The bicycle has now been replaced by cars and public transportation for the most part in the countryside and small towns, but it is fast becoming a preferred mode of urban transport especially for students and young professionals.  I discovered, on my first morning walk through my neighborhood, teams of workers repaving the ciclovia that runs the length of a park along a main street running through the Comuna de Providencia where we have our apartment. A station has popped up at the end of the park where bicycles can be rented and later returned or deposited in another location throughout the city and a clear sign of the times is that the rental process for these bikes is all done with digital hand held computers.  To my pleasant surprise, right next to the bike rental station they have established one of several trash recycle stations cropping up throughout this part of the city, another encouraging sign that Chileans may finally be doing something about more sophisticated waste removal.

Bike rental and recycling station

Paving cycle path

CencoSud tower

A quick panoramic check from my 8th floor balcony reveals that the brand new flashy 70-floor CencoSud tower being built along the Mapocho River in the financial district  referred to as “Sanhatten” appears to be completed, except for the spire I believe they are planning to place on top so that, when finished, it will be the tallest building in South America (and the second tallest in the southern hemisphere), quite an undertaking in such a seismically challenged country.  The opening of this monument to one man’s vanity (and wealth) was first delayed by an economic slowdown in 2011, and is now being delayed further while the municipality and the owners of the building figure out what to do about the significant increase in automobile traffic that will result in the already jammed surrounding streets.




Machas a la parmesana &vino blanco



Farmer's market, Los Dominicos

Tomatoes that taste like tomatoes

Eggplant and green peppers

Farmer's market; artichokes

And, in case you were wondering, the customary “welcome to Chile” lunch of machas a la parmesana and pisco sours were better than ever, and the required early Saturday morning visit to the feria de los chacareros (farmer’s market) near the Los Dominicos church reminded us again of Chile’s bountiful agriculture.  The vegetables in this and a myriad of other fresh markets  in Santiago and throughout the country present an amazing array of healthy food, including big red tomatoes which taste like tomatoes, huge artichokes and eggplant, big juicy yellow onions, the first green peas and beans of the season, several different types of lettuce, the biggest stalks of celery you have ever seen, and of course thick white and green asparagus. 



Tunas (cactus apples)

Chirimoya



Strawberries

The fruits are even more amazing (although it is a bit early for some of Chile’s most well-known varieties), featuring apples, grapes, and pears from last season, and the first tuna (cactus apples), chirimoya, huge crimson strawberries, lemons, limes, juice oranges and the small greenish yellow limones de pica used to make the best pisco sours.
 



Salmon, congrio, clams, mussles

Congrio and Albacore

Scallops

The seafood stand in this market boasted on this sunny but cool Saturday morning a most impressive variety of glisteningly fresh fish and shellfish Chilean waters have to offer:  the most favored congrio (colorado and dorado), corvina (true sea bass, not to be confused with the very different mero sold in the US as Chilean Sea Bass), merluza Española (hake), albacora (albacore tuna), pejerreyes (small smelt-like fish called sea silverside), octopus, salmon, the now popular reineta, clams, mussels, oysters, scallops, and of course machas (the fabulous razor clam commonly eaten in soup, raw with salsa verde which is chopped onion and parsley, or a la parmesana! ).  A traditional favorite in Chile is the loco (abalone).  Over the years it has come in and out of the Chilean diet due to over-harvesting and resultant limits on the amount that can be taken, and of course the price varies, from high to higher.  Today they were selling medium sized out-of-the-shell locos for the equivalent of US$ 3.00 each. 



Chilean oysters

Locos

We brought home a whole merluza, fileted at the market, that Ximena sautéed with fresh herbs and dark green Chilean olive oil, and a bag of machas we baked in the oven with a drop of white wine and parmesan cheese sprinkled on top of each one.

We are in Chile now because in mid-November Chileans will elect a president to replace Sebastian Pinera, and since the two principal candidates are both women, daughters of air force generals who in spite of being colleagues and friends chose opposite sides in the military coup in 1973, the event should be memorable, in my mind worthy of up-close observation. 

We have been in Chile for a little more than a week and the cold snap now seems to have passed, so early spring turns to late spring and the electioneering is just beginning to warm up.  So, we are off to the  quaint port of Valparaiso for a couple of days, then maybe to the northern 4^th region, La Serena and pisco country (Limari and Elqui valleys), and there is even talk of a trip along the Carretera Austral, the new highway that runs south from Puerto Montt through continental Chiloe and Aisen, where the fiord and permanent glacier region of Chile begins.  This is the one part of Chile I am unfamiliar with, so I hope to have much to share with you in future postings as a result.

Posted in Santiago, Chile, on October 7, 2013 (on my Aunt Lucy Joslyn’s 103 birthday, which she is celebrating with friends in West Seneca, NY).