On 11/7/13 2:36 PM, "Patricio D Navia" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21589430-more-left-wing-michelle-ba
>chelet-set-win-tide-social-discontent-cruising-back
>
>Chile¹s presidential election
>
>Cruising back to La Moneda
>
>
>
>A more left-wing Michelle Bachelet is set to win on a tide of social
>discontent
>
>Nov 9th 2013 | SANTIAGO |From the print edition
>
>The Economist
>
>
>
>ON OCTOBER 27th, as Michelle Bachelet, clad in a shawl of green and gold,
>took the stage in a belle-époque theatre in a suburb of Santiago to launch
>her manifesto, the announcer introduced her as ³the future president of
>Chile². For once, the campaign triumphalism did not seem misplaced.
>Everything suggests that Ms Bachelet, a Socialist paediatrician, is
>heading
>back to La Moneda, the presidential palace, only four years after she left
>it. One question is whether she will win outright on November 17th, or be
>taken to a run-off a month later. The other, more important one is just
>how
>far she proposes to steer Chile to the left.
>
>
>
>A survey by the Centre for Public Studies (CEP), the country¹s leading
>pollster, put her within striking distance of outright victory. It
>suggested she would win 47% of the vote (or over 50% after discounting
>blank and spoiled ballots), more than 30 points ahead of her nearest
>challenger. Even some of her opponents concede that Ms Bachelet will
>probably win. Confidence oozes from her campaign team, installed in a
>rambling former hat factory restored in loft style, all bare brickwork and
>blonde wooden floors.
>
>
>
>During her presidency of 2006-10 Ms Bachelet at first stumbled, bungling
>the launch of a bus rapid-transit system in Santiago and later being
>knocked by the world financial crisis. She recovered, partly by using
>Chile¹s fiscal surplus to ease recession through emergency handouts and
>infrastructure projects. But after 20 years in power, her centre-left
>Concertación coalition was weary and fraying. She was succeeded by
>Sebastián Piñera, a billionaire businessman, who returned the centre-right
>to office for the first time since the end of General Augusto Pinochet¹s
>dictatorship in 1990.
>
>
>
>In many ways Mr Piñera¹s government has been a success. Despite slowing
>this year, the economy will have grown at an annual average rate of 5.5%
>under his stewardship, according to Felipe Larraín, the finance minister.
>Unemployment, at 5.7% in the recent winter months, is the lowest in
>decades. Real wages are growing, inflation is contained and the public
>accounts are in good order.
>
>
>
>Despite all this, the governing Alliance¹s candidate, Evelyn Matthei,
>cannot even be certain of coming second in the election. The CEP poll gave
>her just 14% of the vote, not far ahead of two independents, Franco
>Parisi,
>a populist economist, and Marco Enríquez-Ominami, a dissident former
>Concertación member who won 20% of the vote in 2009. Ms Matthei¹s best
>hope
>is that a change in the electoral rules‹registration is now automatic, but
>voting voluntary‹makes turnout uncertain and may render the polls
>unreliable.
>
>
>
>The Alliance turned to Ms Matthei only in July, after choosing two other
>candidates who each self-destructed. The labour minister in Mr Piñera¹s
>government, she is experienced and capable. But she is from the more
>conservative of the Alliance¹s two parties, and many Chileans associate
>her
>with a past they would rather forget. In a 1988 plebiscite, when her
>compatriots voted ³no² to another eight years of military rule under
>Pinochet, Ms Matthei voted ³yes². As head of the air force, her father was
>a member of Pinochet¹s junta. (In an extraordinary twist of fate, he had
>been a close friend of Ms Bachelet¹s father, a fellow air-force general
>who
>died of a heart attack after being imprisoned and tortured by the
>dictatorship in 1973.)
>
>
>
>Seething in Santiago
>
>Mr Piñera has struggled to deal with demands for a fairer society,
>symbolised by large student protests that have persisted throughout his
>government. He responded by slashing the interest rate on student loans
>and
>tripling the number getting grants. But the spirit of protest has proved
>contagious. Hardly a week goes by without a march down Santiago¹s main
>thoroughfare, the Alameda, demanding greater equality, better services or
>simply more money. Chile is experiencing a seething undercurrent of
>dissatisfaction, with calls to scrap the free-market model that has
>created
>Latin America¹s most dynamic economy of modern times.
>
>
>
>Ms Bachelet insists that reducing inequality will be her main commitment.
>³It¹s difficult to have stability without social cohesion,² she says. This
>involves three linked policy changes. To the students, she is offering
>³free² (ie, fully taxpayer-funded) higher education, to be rolled out over
>the next six years. As a first step, the state would pay the tuition fees
>of the poorest 70% of students. She wants all secondary schools to operate
>on a not-for-profit basis (some, at the moment, are run as businesses),
>and
>would increase school budgets so that parents no longer have to top them
>up. The aim, she says, is to improve quality, which varies widely. But
>since she is offering state funding to rich and poor students alike, the
>higher-education plan is socially regressive, as a delegation from the
>OECD, a think-tank, noted on a recent visit. It is also costly, requiring
>extra funding of 1.5%-2.0% of GDP per year.
>
>
>
>That money would come from tax reform. Ms Bachelet says she would raise
>the
>corporate tax rate from 20% to 25% over four years, cut the top rate of
>personal income tax from 40% to 35% and eliminate the Taxable Profits Fund
>(FUT), a mechanism that allows companies to defer indefinitely tax
>payments
>on reinvested earnings. This last measure has drawn howls of protest from
>businessmen, who say it will stifle investment just as economic growth is
>waning. Ms Bachelet¹s advisers say that the FUT is abused by Chile¹s rich
>to avoid paying tax on their personal incomes.
>
>
>
>The third pillar of Ms Bachelet¹s campaign is a new constitution to
>replace
>the one drawn up by Pinochet in 1980. Although amended 30 times, it still
>contains what she calls ³padlocks² against change. The electoral system of
>two-member constituencies tends to over-represent the right; some laws
>require a supermajority of four-sevenths. Because of the charter¹s
>origins,
>it is reviled by the left. Ms Bachelet has floated the idea of a
>constituent assembly, which alarms many who believe the constitution
>requires reform rather than replacement. But she says that her preferred
>option is to win a big majority in Congress and use it to push through
>electoral and other reforms. She has brought the Communist Party into an
>expanded centre-left coalition. Even so, polls suggest the best she can
>hope for is a slender majority in both houses.
>
>
>
>We want in
>
>All this suggests that in a second presidency Ms Bachelet would govern
>from
>farther to the left than she did in her previous term. How much farther?
>³Her reading of society is based on the students,² says Patricio Navia, a
>Chilean political scientist at New York University. They are more radical
>than ordinary Chileans, who want ³to be incorporated into the benefits of
>economic growth, not to change the model,² he says. That may be so, but
>many also want ³the model² to work better, especially the privatised
>health-care and pension systems. Ms Bachelet wants to tweak pensions.
>³Whatever we do, we¹ll do it in a responsible way,² she says.
>
>
>
>That sort of low-key pragmatism is characteristic of Ms Bachelet. Her
>heart
>is firmly on the left. She is an atheist, and an unmarried mother of three
>children. After leaving La Moneda, she spent three years running the UN¹s
>organisation for women. On the other hand, she is also consensual.
>Although
>most Chileans do not see her as a professional politician, she is in fact
>a
>skilful one. She is already playing down expectations of radical change.
>³Chile has done a lot of good things,² she says. ³You can be popular
>without being populist. I haven¹t been promising paradise.²
>
>
>
>Patricio Navia
>
>*Liberal Studies, New York University
>
>726 Broadway, Room 666, NY, NY 10003
>
>(212) 995-3728  (347)-834-2017
>
>*Escuela de Ciencia Política, Universidad Diego Portales
>
>Ejército 333, Segundo Piso
>
>Santiago, Chile
>
>(562) 676-8170 (569)9235-5350
>
>https://files.nyu.edu/pdn200/public/