Santiago – In Chile’s November elections, anti-establishment voting is the essence of the game. A new populist left-wing party based on Spain's Podemos party captured 1/5 of the votes. Many established figures, including the Senate President, lost their seats in Congress. Pundits were quick to point out the sudden shift to the left.
However, in the second round of election voting held on December 7, the Chilean people sent Sebastian Pinera, a representative of the local conservative establishment, former president and billionaire, to the Democratic Party again. Back to the Presidential Palace. How could this be? What does this paradox reveal about the political situation in Chile and Latin America?
If the world works according to such simple rules, then Chilean Socialist President Michelle Bachelet - by taxing the rich, transferring payments to the poor, making university education free and submitting a bill to Congress, Calls for more generous pensions - should be able to choose her successor at will. But she couldn't do that.
Today, only 2/5 of Chileans approve of the way she is implementing reforms. Her left-wing coalition has fallen apart, the traditional social and social democratic parties have lost seats in parliament, and her worst nightmare has become a reality: once again (the same story already happened in 2010), she has to Handing the presidential sash to Pi?era, a bitter conservative foe.
Chile is not unique in this regard. Argentinian and Peruvian voters have also recently favored successful business people (Mauricio Macri and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, respectively) over populist alternatives, both on the left and right. In Brazil, Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed from office. She was not defeated in the polls, but a sharp decline in the popularity of her Workers’ Party (PT) coincided perfectly with the pro-business government that followed. Regional trends.
So why are Latin American voters gradually abandoning the populist or semi-populist left? Corruption is the conventional explanation. In Argentina and Brazil, it goes without saying that recent political changes are simply incomprehensible without understanding the antics of the Peronists and grassroots workers' party members. The best gift Macri's cabinet has ever received was a video of a former Peronist minister trying to hide millions of dollars and euros in a local monastery.
But such a simple explanation does not fit Chile. True, Bachelet's son and daughter-in-law were involved in shady real estate dealings. But Pi?era was no saint either. For example, in 2007, Chile's securities regulator punished him for insider trading. In many countries, this could mean the end of a political career - and there are several other examples of his illegal behavior.
So why did the Chilean people vote for him?
One of the reasons is that Bachelet’s left-wing forces misjudged the situation in Chile. When students took to the streets in 2011, prompting other groups to follow suit, left-wing intellectuals interpreted it as a wholesale rejection of what they called the "model": a market economy open to the world, with private sector participation in health, education, and elderly care services. play an important role in the delivery process.
The Bachelet government moved quickly to cut private schools funded by vouchers, end for-profit education, refuse to build new hospitals in public-private partnerships, and not allow private companies to manage additional retirement savings.
Some of these measures were popular, but most had negative effects. Middle-class families who have struggled to send their children to private schools (nearly 60% of students attend such institutions) do not welcome what they see as unwarranted government interference. Patients facing long waiting lists bemoan the hospitals that were never built.
The public is certainly deeply disturbed by conspiracy, price gouging, and abuse of power by private companies. But they are taking to the streets to fix the system, not to destroy it and replace it with something else. They want tinkering and evolution, not revolution.
Bachelet's problems have also been exacerbated by a sharp economic slowdown that can be blamed at least in part on imperfect labor market reforms and tax design (low commodity prices in 2014-16 also played a role ). In Latin America's middle-class societies, the importance of well-paid and decent jobs does not need to be explained. But the regional left, like the British Labor Party in the 1980s, does not seem ready to provide such jobs.
Pi?era promised to accelerate economic growth. Many business deals have been put on hold ahead of the election, so investment will be on the rise in 2018. But Chile’s productivity growth has been negligible for nearly two decades, and so has export diversification. It's still completely unclear what measures Pi?era plans to take.
In Chile, a country where this generation is far more educated than previous generations, voters expect their leaders to possess a minimum level of competence. Pi?era was a mediocre speaker (his victory speech was so disjointed that his wife and children were seen whispering during his speech), but his Harvard economics degree showed he was well versed in facts and figures. By contrast, Pi?era's second-round rival, Alejandro Guillier, has little understanding of even the most basic policy issues.
Only 36% of voters voted for Pi?era in the first round.
But in the runoff, enough people saw it as the lesser of two evils that he won handily by nine points. He will fail to win a majority in parliament and students and unions are likely to take to the streets again soon after he takes over in March. He hopes to maintain a high level of popularity like Macri. But he may end up like Michelle Temer and Kuczynski, who replaced Rousseff, both of whom lost public support within just a few months of taking over.
We will soon know the answer to the mystery of one of the two choices.
Author: Andrs Velasco, former Minister of Finance of Chile and professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs; Translator: Xu Binbin. This article was originally published on Syndicate Project on December 27, 2017; click "Read the original text" in the lower left corner of the screen to read it in Spanish
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