Fighting Pinochet’s Ghost

General Augusto Pinochet’s grip over Chile’s political life did not disappear on the night of October 5 1988, when Chileans voted against his confirmation at the country’s helm and brought a 15–years-long dictatorship to an end: the dictatorship had only changed in shape. Patricio Aylwin, the first democratically-elected president of the post-Pinochet era, had inherited a country still riddled with the enclaves that the dictator had set up to fashion a “protected democracy”. Put otherwise, Pinochet had sought – and managed – to establish a set of mechanisms that would guarantee that his control over the country would never dilute, independent of the changes Chile’s political outlook would experience at the larger scale.

Aylwin’s Concertación, the left wing-coalition that would rule the country in the years to come, was forced to work within the 1980 Constitution, which severely limited the discretionary power of the new government. A set of binding laws (leyes de amarre) restricted the number of key public sector posts the Concertación could appoint, and prohibited the investigation of Pinochet’s atrocities. The establishment of a military-dominated National Security Council further limited the President’s power to appoint or dismiss military officers. The military’s domination stretched over Chile’s parliament as well. The authoritarian enclaves of the 1980 Constitution allowed the former regime to directly appoint senators, so much so that the majority Aylwin had gained in the 1989 elections did not turn into a majority in Congress.

But Pinochet’s constitutional design also included a much more troublesome clause: the dictatorship had arranged the electoral process to follow a binomial system. Each electoral district would have two seats open for contest, and each party or coalition could present two candidates per district. The problem was that, in order to win in both seats and thus gain the totality of the constituency, a party would have to more than double the total votes of the second-placed one. In Chile’s two-coalition context, this would effectively mean that a party would have to reach at least a 66% to gain the district’s two seats. And as both the Concertación and its right-wing political counterpart, Alianza, would score between 33% and 66%, each would normally manage to secure a candidate in each district. In this way, not only would the results not match voters’ preferences – the right could effectively exercise a veto power over the Concertación, and hinder its attempts at reforms in Congress.

So, for all the frenzy of the post-plebiscite days, the Concertación had to struggle with the carryovers of Pinochet’s authoritarian past. Far from finally being able to rejoice in a fully-fledged democracy, in the words of Aylwin himself, “Chile enjoyed a democratic system to the extent possible”.

Twenty-five years after the first post-Pinochet’s President assumed power, and after 21 of these under Concertación governments, Aylwin’s statement is a thing of the past. Chile’s left has begun to debunk the relics of Pinochet’s dictatorship. In 2005, under the presidency of Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006), the Concertación passed a package of constitutional reforms which removed the appointed senators, increased the President’s power over the armed forces, and curtailed the strength of the National Security Council. Seen from this angle, the Concertación shifted from being concerned with the mere administration of Pinochet’s protected democracy, to a logic that now seeks to actively transform the dictator’s inheritance. If governability was the key word for the first post-Pinochet governments, reform would appear to be – at least in the political discourse – the guiding thread of the latest Concertación years.

The memorable decision taken by the Senate on January 14 follows this trajectory. By finally removing the binomial system, Bachelet’s government has managed to demolish one the last remnants of Pinochet’s extended legacy. Under the new model approved last Wednesday – which must now pass through the Chamber of Deputies to be finally implemented – the uneven representations ensued through the binomial system will be replaced by the D’Hont system. Under the latter, the number of seats is allocated on the basis of the proportion of votes won.

The government’s project also includes a major re-shaping of the parliament’s outlook. The removal of the binomial system shall be matched by the increase in the number of senators (from 38 to 50) and deputies (120 to 155). The change seeks to provide better representations to some of the country’s regions, but the right wing opposition has vehemently rejected it, on the basis that the increase in MPs shall only bring further expenses to tax-payers. Alianza representatives may have a valid point, but this comes as the natural by-product of what seeks to be a more representative model. It would be hard, if not impossible, to think of a more proportional system that did not entail an increase in the number of parliamentarians.

A much more worrisome question is what exactly will be the extent of this allegedly greater representation. In other words, the government has defended the amendments on the basis that they should generate incentives for the creation and development of new parties. Roughly stated, this is because the criteria to form a political group have been somewhat loosened. At the present moment, the establishment of a party requires the signatures of 0.5% of those who voted in the last deputies’ elections. This will now be reduced to a mere 0.25%. But at the same time, the reform states that independent candidates will need the support of 0.5% of those who last voted in their specific district. In this sense, an independent candidate will require more votes than those needed to form a party.

The removal of the binomial system will certainly lead the Concertación to face new challenges. There is a reasonable fear that the new model will lead to a proliferation of small parties, as well as new challenges to the country’s governability. And even if the project will be approved by the Lower Chamber next week, the success cannot gloss over the many tasks which Bachelet’s government is yet to solve, beginning with the country’s inequalities, the discrepancies between public and private education, and the legacy which the neoliberal economic models championed during – and after – Pinochet’s rule have left for the country’s poor. But the Senate’s decision last Wednesday is a major step forward. It is a brave and much-needed move away from a past which has never ceased to haunt Chile’s democracy.