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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Chile
Index
In 1965, following the dramatic rise of the Christian
Democrats, primarily at their expense, Chile's two
traditional
right-wing parties, the Liberal Party and Conservative
Party,
merged into the National Party (Partido Nacional--PN).
Their
traditional disagreements over issues such as the proper
role of
the Roman Catholic Church in society paled by comparison
with the
challenge posed by the left to private property and
Chile's
hierarchical social order. The new party, energized by the
presidential candidacy of Jorge Alessandri in 1970, helped
the
right regain some of its lost electoral ground. The
National Party
won 21.1 percent of the vote in the 1973 congressional
elections,
the last before the coup.
The National Party was at the forefront of the
opposition to
the Allende government, working closely with elements of
the
business community. National Party leaders welcomed the
coup and,
unlike the Christian Democrats, were content to accept the
military
authorities' injunction that parties go into "recess."
Until 1984
the National Party remained moribund, with most of the
party
leaders concerning themselves with private pursuits or an
occasional embassy post. With the riots of 1983 and 1984,
leaders
on the right began to worry about the return of civilian
politics
and the challenge of rebuilding party organizations. In
1987 three
rightist organizations--the National Unity Movement
(Movimiento de
Unidad Nacional--MUN), representing leaders of Chile's
traditional
parties; the National Labor Front (Frente Nacional del
Trabajo--
FNT), headed by a more nationalistic group tied to small
business
and rural interests; and the Independent Demócratic Union
(Unión
Democráta Independiente--UDI), constituted by former junta
advisers
and officials of the military government--joined to form
the
National Renewal party as a successor to the National
Party. The
uneasy alliance soon broke apart as the UDI signaled its
strong
support for the plebiscite of 1988 and a Pinochet
candidacy, while
the National Renewal party indicated its preference for an
open
election or a candidate other than Pinochet.
With Pinochet's defeat, the National Renewal party's
prestige
rose considerably. In the aftermath of the plebiscite,
National
Renewal worked closely with the other opposition parties
to propose
far-reaching amendments to the constitution. The National
Renewal
party, however, could not impose its own party president,
having to
concede the presidential candidacy of the right to the
UDI's Büchi.
After the 1989 congressional race, the National Renewal
party
emerged as the dominant party of the right, benefiting
strongly
from the electoral law and electing six senators and
twenty-nine
deputies. Its strength in the Senate meant that the Aylwin
government had to compromise with the National Renewal
party to
gain support for key legislative and constitutional
measures. The
National Renewal party saw much of its support wane in the
wake of
party scandals involving its most promising presidential
candidates.
While the RN drew substantial support from rural areas
and
traditional small businessmen, the UDI appealed to new
entrepreneurial elites and middle sectors in Chile's
rapidly
growing modern sector. The UDI also made inroads in
low-income
neighborhoods with special programs appealing to the poor,
a legacy
of the Pinochet regime's urban policy. The assassination
of UDI
founder Senator Jaime Guzmán Errázuriz on April 1, 1991,
was a
serious blow, depriving the party of its strongest leader.
A discussion of the parties of the right would not be
complete
without a mention of the Union of the Centrist Center
(Unión de
Centro Centro--UCC), a loose organization created by
Francisco
Errázuriz. Because parties of the left like to call
themselves
"center-left" and parties of the right "center-right" to
avoid
being labeled as extremist, Errázuriz coined the somewhat
redundant
name of the UCC to show that he is the only
centrist-centrist. The
UCC had no party organization and no clear programmatic
orientation. Yet it regularly commanded the support of
about 5
percent of the electorate, enough to place the party in a
privileged position to bargain for places on the party
lists of
either the right or the CPD, giving Errázuriz more clout
than his
real support would indicate.
The advent of the 1993 presidential race underscored
the
continued rivalry of the parties of the right. Reformers
in the
National Renewal party failed in their effort to provide
the nation
with a new generation of rightist leaders as Senator
Sebastian
Piñera and Congresswoman Evelyn Matthei canceled
themselves out in
a bitter struggle. Only after months of charges and
countercharges,
and in the face of the CPD's remarkable capacity for
unity, could
the National Unity party, UDI, and UCC succeed in
structuring a
joint congressional list and selecting a presidential
candidate.
Data as of March 1994
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