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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Chile
Index
The victory of the opposition led to a period of
political
uncertainty. The no coalition had campaigned on a platform
that
rejected not only Pinochet's candidacy but also the
"itinerary" and
proposed "institutionality" of the Pinochet government.
Democratic
leaders felt that their clear victory entitled them to
seek
significant modifications in the constitutional framework
established by the armed forces. However, they firmly
rejected
calls for Pinochet's resignation, or the formation of a
provisional
government, as unrealistic. Although Pinochet and the
armed forces
had suffered an electoral defeat, they had, of course, not
been
defeated militarily, nor had they lost their iron grip on
the
state. Nor was there any hint that the military would be
willing to
disregard Pinochet's wishes and abandon the transition
formula and
institutional order envisioned in "their" 1980
constitution. The
fact that Pinochet had received 43 percent of the popular
vote,
despite fifteen years in office, only strengthened his
hand in
military circles.
Under these circumstances, the opposition leaders
understood
that they could not risk upsetting the military's
transition
formula or giving Pinochet an excuse to renege on the
constitutional provision calling for an open presidential
election
within seventeen months. The opposition had won the
plebiscite
following Pinochet's rules; it could not now turn around
and fully
disavow them. Yet the opposition faced a serious dilemma.
The 1980
constitution would be very difficult to amend once a new
government
was elected; a government elected under its terms would be
locked
into a legal structure the coalition considered
fundamentally
undemocratic. Pinochet would appoint almost one-third of
the
Senate, and the congressional election would take place
under the
rules of a system designed to favor the forces of the
right, which
had supported the military government. Changes to the
constitution
could be approved much more expeditiously before the full
return to
democracy because they would require the approval of only
four men
on the military junta, subject to ratification by a
plebiscite.
Moderates within the military government who were open
to
discussions with the opposition quickly distanced
themselves from
regime officials and supporters who saw any compromise as
capitulation. These moderates believed that it was in the
military
regime's clear interest to bargain with the opposition so
as to
salvage the essential features of the institutional legacy
of the
armed forces. They wanted a "soft landing" and feared that
if the
regime proved inflexible, a groundswell of support for the
opposition could sweep away all of what they viewed as the
government's accomplishments.
The position of the moderates in the military
government, whose
power was not assured, was bolstered significantly by the
willingness of the largest party on the right, the
National Renewal
(Renovación Nacional--RN), to sit down with the opposition
parties
to come to an agreement on constitutional reforms.
Political
leaders of the democratic right were also uncomfortable
with many
of the authoritarian features of the 1980 constitution and
anxious
to distance themselves from the more unpalatable features
of the
regime as the country began to move toward electoral
politics. They
too were committed to a spirit of dialogue that might help
prevent
a breakdown in the transition and a return to raw military
rule.
The rightists' willingness to talk to their opponents in
the center
and on the left placed the regime hard-liners on notice:
if reforms
were not accomplished before the election of a Congress,
the
center-left parties of the opposition and the moderate
right might
yet find a way to dismantle the constitution of 1980.
The moderates within the government won the day with
two
additional arguments. First, they argued that any
compromise with
the opposition would leave the essence of the constitution
intact
while providing it with a legitimacy it presently lacked.
The
constitutional reforms finally would establish the
Pinochet
document as the legitimate successor to the 1925
constitution.
Second, the government soft-liners made persuasive
arguments
that constitutional reforms, prior to the advent of
democratic
politics, could improve certain features of the
constitution. The
constitution was designed for Pinochet's reelection, not
his
defeat, and the armed forces feared that the document did
not
sufficiently protect their institutional autonomy. By
entering into
a constitutional-reform agreement, the authorities could
insist on
an amendment that would elevate the law regulating the
armed
forces' internal operations, including promotions,
organization,
training, and finances, to the status of an "organic
constitutional
law." This would mean that changes in the law could not be
made
unless approved by a majority, or four-sevenths, of all
senators
and deputies.
The extraordinary bargaining among the democratic
opposition,
the moderate right, and the regime owed much to the
leadership of
Patricio Aylwin, the leader of the Christian Democrats,
who had
become the standard-bearer of the no alliance. Aylwin
understood
that the hard-liners within the military government could
make the
transition difficult, if not impossible, if the reform
process
broke down. Nor did Aylwin, who expected to be the next
president
of Chile, relish the prospect of a confrontational
transition
government in which the new authorities would endeavor
vainly to
implement reforms while supporters of the former military
government sought to hold the line. The prospects for the
first
government after a long authoritarian interlude would be
jeopardized by a continuous struggle to define the future
of the
country's institutional order. Better to agree on the
playing field
now, in order to avoid fatal problems later. For the
regime, Carlos
Cáceres, Pinochet's minister of interior, played a
critical role.
At one point in the talks, he threatened to resign when
the general
balked at key constitutional reforms, only to find strong
support
for his position among other commanders on the junta.
Opponents of constitutional reform on both the far left
and the
far right shared a curious symbiotic logic. Those on the
left
rejected reform because they envisioned a sharp break with
the
military government, which would be defeated once again in
an open
presidential election and would have to concede the
failure of its
institutional blueprint. Those on the right relished that
very
confrontation because they saw it as forcing the military
once
again to accept its "patriotic responsibility" and save
the country
from a citizenry still not ready for democracy.
The fifty-four reforms, approved by 85.7 percent of the
voters
on July 30, 1989, fell far short of the expectations of
the
opposition but nevertheless represented significant
concessions on
the part of the authorities. From the point of view of the
opposition, the most important modifications were to
Article 8,
which in its new form penalized parties or groups that,
through
their actions and not simply through their objectives,
threatened
the democratic order. Other reforms eliminated the
prohibition
against party membership of labor or association leaders,
required
the courts to consider habeas corpus petitions in all
circumstances, and prohibited exile as a sanction. The
revised
article also reduced the qualified majorities required for
approval
of organic constitutional laws and constitutional
amendments in
Congress; eliminated the requirement that two successive
Congresses
vote to enact amendments; and increased the number of
elected
senators to thirty-eight, thus reducing the proportion of
designated senators while restoring some oversight
functions to the
Senate. In addition, the amended article eliminated the
president's
power to dissolve the lower house of Congress and reduced
some of
the chief executive's power to declare a state of
exception;
changed the mandate of Cosena by substituting the word
representar (represent) for hacer presente
(make
known), a legal construction that the opposition
interpreted from
legal precedents at the Office of the Comptroller General
of the
Republic (Oficina de la Contraloría General de la
República) as
giving Cosena an advisory role, rather than an enforcement
role;
and increased the membership of Cosena to eight by adding
another
civilian member, the comptroller general (contraloría
general). The latter modification ensured that the
military
members of Cosena would not enjoy a four-to-three
majority.
From the perspective of the Pinochet government, the
most
important result of the reform process was the retention
of the
essential elements of its constitutional design and its
ratification by an overwhelming majority of the citizenry.
What the
military had not achieved in 1980, it achieved with the
negotiations of 1989. The constitution of the armed forces
had now
replaced the constitution of 1925 as the legitimate
fundamental law
of the land. Although it had to concede some points, the
military
gained a significant victory with the provision that laws
dealing
with the armed forces would be governed by an organic
constitutional law. The Pinochet regime also succeeded in
having
the first elected president's term limited to four years
with no
option to run for reelection. Government officials were
convinced
that even if the opposition parties won the next election,
they
would be incapable of governing, a situation that would
open the
door in four years to a new administration more to the
military's
liking.
With the approval of the constitutional reforms,
Chile's
transition became, in political sociologist Juan J. Linz's
terms,
a transición pactada (a transition by agreement),
rather
than a transición por ruptura (a sharp break with
the
previous order). However, the opposition made clear that
it saw the
agreements as constituting only a first step in
democratizing the
constitution, and that it would seek further reforms of
Cosena, the
composition of the Constitutional Tribunal and the Senate,
the
election of local governments, the president's authority
over the
armed forces, and the powers of Congress and the courts.
With the constitutional reforms behind them, Chileans
turned
their attention to the December 14, 1989, elections, the
first
democratic elections for president and Congress in
nineteen years.
The fourteen opposition parties formed the Coalition of
Parties for
Democracy (Concertación de Partidos por la
Democracia--CPD), with
Aylwin as standard-bearer. His principal opponent was
Pinochet's
former minister of finance, Hernán Büchi Buc, who ran as
an
independent supported by the progovernment Independent
Democratic
Union (Unión Demócrata Independiente--UDI) and the more
moderate
rightist party National Renewal, which ran a joint
congressional
coalition called Democracy and Progress (Democracia y
Progreso).
Independent businessman Francisco Javier Errázuriz
Talavera ran as
the third candidate on a populist platform supported by a
heterogeneous group of small parties calling themselves
Unity for
Democracy (Unidad por la Democracia).
Aylwin (1990-94) won a decisive victory, improving on
the no
vote in the plebiscite with 55.2 percent of the 7.1
million votes
cast to Büchi's 29.4 percent and Errázuriz's 15.4 percent
(see
table 25, Appendix). In the congressional races, the CPD
was able
to beat the heavy odds imposed by the government's
electoral
formula and win a majority of the elected seats in both
the Chamber
of Deputies and the Senate. The CPD gained 49.3 percent of
the vote
to 32.4 percent for Democracy and Progress in the Chamber
of
Deputies, and 50.5 percent of the vote versus 43 percent
for its
opponent in the Senate (see
table 36, Appendix).
Although the CPD won a majority of the contested seats
in
Congress, it fell short of having the numbers required to
offset
the designated senators to be appointed by the Pinochet
government.
Passage of even the simplest legislation would have
required
negotiations with opposition parties or individual
designated
senators. The military regime's electoral law had ensured
an
overrepresentation of the parties of the right in relation
to their
voting strength, making it virtually impossible for the
new
civilian government to adopt constitutional reforms
without the
concurrence of one of the main opposition groups.
Not the least of the new government's challenges was
Pinochet
himself, who by constitutional provision could remain as
commander
in chief of the army until 1997. Pinochet made it clear
that he
would continue to be a watchdog, ensuring that the new
rules were
followed and that "none of his men were touched" for their
actions
in the "war" to save Chile from communism.
Although Chile's authoritarian legacies clearly
frustrated the
new leadership, the transition probably was facilitated in
the
short term by the veto power that the military and the
right
continued to enjoy. Had the CPD pressed for an immediate
modification of Pinochet's institutional edifice and
attempted to
dismiss many of his supporters, the armed forces would
have been
far more resistant to the return of civilian rule.
Chile's rightist parties, which remained suspicious of
popular
sovereignty and fearful that a center-left alliance with
majority
support could threaten their survival, would have been
much more
likely to conspire with the military had their
"guarantees" been
undermined. These authoritarian legacies also contributed
to the
success of the transition by helping the broad coalition
under
Aylwin's leadership achieve unity, retain it, and
elaborate a
common program of moderate policies. This moderation can
be
attributed not only to respect for a new style of politics
after
the traumatic years of authoritarian rule, but also to the
new
authorities' genuine fear of the strength of the armed
forces and
their rightist supporters. The danger Chile now faced was
that the
very provisions that made the transition possible in the
short term
could make the consolidation of a stable democracy more
difficult
in the long term.
Data as of March 1994
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