Presidential elections in Chile 2009/2010

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The four candidates Eduardo Frei, Marco Enriquez-Ominami, Jorge Arrate and Sebastián Piñera (from left) during a TV debate

In the presidential elections in Chile 2009/2010 , the entrepreneur Sebastián Piñera was elected to succeed the outgoing President Michelle Bachelet . Bachelet belonged to the center-left Concertación , which has provided the Chilean president since the return to democracy in 1989 . During her tenure, she had pushed social legislation forward and, thanks to clever decisions, brought the country through the financial crisis well . Despite high approval rates, she was not allowed to run again because Chilean suffrage forbids two consecutive terms of office.

In turbulent primaries , the ruling center-left alliance nominated Eduardo Frei , who had been President of Chile between 1994 and 2000. The opposition center-right alliance sent Sebastián Piñera into the race, who had failed in the runoff election to Bachelet four years earlier. Another candidate was Marco Enríquez-Ominami , who had been a member of the Concertación before the election. He originally wanted to run for the government alliance, but the party leadership refused to participate in the internal primaries. He then resigned from the Concertación and took part in the election as an independent candidate. The fourth candidate, Jorge Arrate , also left the government alliance out of anger about the nomination process. The former minister did not run as an independent, but was nominated by the left alliance Juntos Podemos Más .

As expected, Sebastián Piñera won the first ballot on December 13, 2009 by a large margin. He received around 44 percent of the vote, but this was not enough for an absolute majority, so that a runoff was necessary. Eduardo Frei made it to second place with around 29 percent of the vote. He also reached the runoff election, but was responsible for the worst result of the Concertación since 1989. Marco Enriquez-Ominami achieved a remarkable result with around 20 percent of the vote, but he was eliminated, as was Jorge Arrate, who received only six percent. Parliamentary elections were held at the same time as the first round of presidential elections . Piñera won the runoff election on January 17, 2010.

Piñera was the first representative of the right-wing party alliance to win a presidential election in Chile after the return to democracy. The Concertación landed in opposition for the first time and had to reposition itself as a result. There were several reasons for Piñera's electoral success: The government alliance was weakened by the chaotic nomination process, Piñera succeeded in expanding its range of voters to include the middle class, which is traditionally close to the center-left alliance, and his own alliance was characterized by unusual unity during the election campaign out.

Starting position

Political framework

The four Presidents of the Concertación: Ricardo Lagos, Eduardo Frei, Michelle Bachelet and Patricio Aylwin (from left)

The bloc formation of political parties is characteristic of the political system in Chile. Due to the binomial right to vote , which favors the two strongest alliances, two political blocs emerged after the return to democracy, which determine political events. On the one hand, there is the center-left Concertación, which contributed to the overthrow of the military dictatorship and has been the government ever since. It consisted of the four parties Partido Demócrata Cristiano (PDC), Partido Socialista (PS), Partido por la Democracia (PPD) and Partido Radical Socialdemócrata (PRSD). In the early years, the Christian Democrats appointed Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei twice as president, followed by Ricardo Lagos from the socialist PPD and Michelle Bachelet from the PS. With a reign of twenty years, the Concertación was the most stable political alliance in Chile to date. On the other side of the political spectrum, the center-right alliance Alianza por Chile was formed, in which Pinochet's supporters rallied. It included the right-wing conservative Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI) and the more moderate Renovación Nacional (RN).

In the run-up to the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2009, other parties had joined the two political alliances. The Concertación has expanded to include the Partido Comunista (PC) for the parliamentary elections . The government alliance had nominated few promising candidates in some constituencies to help the Communist Party get seats in parliament. In return, it hoped that it would support the PC in a possible second round of the presidential election. The opposition center-right alliance expanded to include the liberal party ChilePrimero , which had caused a sensation in the 2008 local elections with its surprising successes. Hoping for a change in mood in the country, the alliance no longer entered under the name Alianza por Chile, but from now on called itself Coalición por el Cambio (coalition for change). In common parlance, however, the old name was retained. Two other alliances took part in the presidential elections: The independent candidate Marco Enríquez-Ominami was supported by the Nueva Mayoría para Chile alliance , which was composed of the Partido Ecologista de Chile (PECH) and the Partido Humanista (PH). Jorge Arrate received support from the Juntos Podemos Más alliance, which consisted of the Partido Comunista and Izquierda Cristiana (IC).

Balance sheet of the Bachelet presidency

Approval (blue) and rejection rates (red) for Michelle Bachelet, collected by Adimark

The socialist Michelle Bachelet had won the 2005/2006 presidential election in a runoff election against the candidate of the Alianza por Chile, Sebastián Piñera. She was the first woman president of Chile and the first woman president of a Latin American country that had not previously been ruled by her husband. At the beginning of her presidency, Bachelet's government appeared unstable. Chilean students took to the streets to demonstrate for better and more equitable education, and the new transport concept in the capital, Santiago , got off to a chaotic start. In the second half of her term in office, her government managed to return to calmer waters. The problems with Santiago's new transport system gradually decreased and it made fewer mistakes. The main focus of her reign was on improving the social security system, because although Chile had developed well economically in recent years, income was still unfairly distributed. Bachelet relied on the expansion of day nurseries, introduced a state minimum pension, expanded health care and promoted social housing. Although more extensive reforms in the education and health systems would have been necessary, these areas remained largely untouched by it.

The global financial crisis from 2007 onwards did not hit Chile as hard as other countries in the region, which was mainly due to the measures taken by the Bachelets government: In order to cope with the crisis, it launched an investment program of four billion US dollars, infrastructure projects and social policy measures should finance. The Chilean state was only able to afford these expenses because Bachelet's government had not directly reinvested the immense income from copper exports - an essential pillar of the Chilean economy - but had put it aside for bad times. Thanks to the successful crisis management, Bachelet received approval ratings of over 80 percent towards the end of her presidency; the highest ever given to a Chilean president. Although these numbers would have offered a comfortable starting position for re-election, this is forbidden in Chilean electoral law. Presidents whose term of office has expired are only allowed to run for president again after an interruption by another candidate, so that Bachelet was only allowed to run again in 2013.

Candidates

Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle

Eduardo Frei at an election campaign event in September 2009

The government alliance Concertación nominated the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle as a presidential candidate, who held this office from 1994 to 2000. His father Eduardo Frei Montalva was also President of Chile from 1964 to 1970. At the time of his nomination, Frei was a member of the Chilean Senate. The four parties supporting the alliance had agreed for the first time to hold primaries to determine their common candidate. Originally, the former President Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) and the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza , were supposed to compete alongside Frei , but both dropped out of the race in January 2009. Lagos decided not to be nominated because he was discouraged by the lack of internal support. His exit in January 2009 came too late to give Insulza a decisive boost, so that Insulza also declared his exit.

Since the PDC, PS and PPD supported Frei, it looked as if Frei would be spared the primaries. At the end of January, however, the chairman of the PRSD's smallest alliance partner, Senator José Antonio Gómez , surprisingly announced his candidacy. After tough negotiations, the national leadership of the Concertación agreed on a mode of holding the primary elections, which provided for a total of six ballots in different regions of Chile. Given the balance of power and the high election campaign costs, both sides agreed that Gómez would withdraw his candidacy if Frei should achieve a lead of more than 20 percent in the first ballot. In the polls on April 5, 2009, which took place in the O'Higgins and the Maule Región , Frei received almost 65 percent of the vote and thus became the official presidential candidate of the government alliance.

Sebastián Piñera

Sebastián Piñera casting his vote in the second ballot

The opposition center-right alliance chose the entrepreneur Sebastián Piñera from the conservative Renovación Nacional without internal primaries. He owns shares in the airline LAN Airlines , the football club CSD Colo-Colo and the television station Chilevisión and is considered one of the richest people in Chile.

Piñera had already participated in the previous presidential election. At that time, the two parties that formed the right-wing alliance could not agree on a common candidate, so they each ran with their own candidate. The UDI nominated Joaquín Lavín , who had already stood in the 1999 elections. Sebastián Piñera ran for the RN, who also made it into the runoff election. There he had to admit defeat to the socialist Michelle Bachelet. Despite his defeat, he was quickly brought back into play as a possible candidate for the following elections. After Bachelet took office, Piñera had largely withdrawn from politics, but he was still able to achieve good values ​​in opinion polls. As a result, the center-right alliance renounced primaries and nominated him as his presidential candidate without a fight. His official appointment took place on September 1, 2009 at a large-scale ceremony in Santiago, which was attended by more than 10,000 followers.

Marco Enríquez-Ominami

Marco Enríquez-Ominami (left) with the Brazilian President Lula

Marco Enríquez-Ominami ran as an independent candidate. His family was close to the political elite: his father was MIR founder Miguel Enríquez , who was murdered in 1974 by Pinochet's secret police DINA ; his mother was the daughter of a former senator and co-founder of the Christian Democratic PDC. He later also took the name of his adoptive father Carlos Ominami , who was a minister in the first Concertación government and was a member of the Senate at the time of Enríquez-Ominami's candidacy.

Enríquez-Ominami himself worked in the film industry and since 2005 has been a member of the Chamber of Deputies for the PS and thus part of the Concertación. In January 2009 he had expressed his interest in running as a representative of the government alliance, but like Senator Alejandro Navarro had been ignored by the head of the PS, Camilo Escalona , because he considered their chances to be too low. In anger about the closed selection process within the Concertación, both left the PS in June and announced their own independent candidacies. While Navarro withdrew his candidacy, Enríquez-Ominami had managed by August to collect the 36,000 signatures required to run as an independent candidate.

Jorge Arrate

Jorge Arrate on election day

The fourth presidential candidate was Jorge Arrate. In the 1970s he was already a minister under the socialist president Salvador Allende . During the dictatorship he was in exile and organized the resistance of the Chileans who had left the country. As a member of the PS, he was a member of the Aylwin, Frei and Lagos governments after the return to democracy. In 2007 he announced that the Concertación was over. Like Enríquez-Ominami, Jorge Arrate resigned from the PS in spring 2009 because he disapproved of the Concertación's closed selection process.

Instead of running as an independent candidate like this one, he joined the communist Partido Comunista (PC), which belonged to the extra-parliamentary electoral alliance Juntos Podemos Más. On April 25, 2009 Arrate prevailed against the chairman of the Partido Humanista Chileno (PH), Tomás Hirsch , who had already represented the alliance in the previous presidential elections. During the election campaign, the PH refused to support him and from July supported the independent candidate Enríquez-Ominami.

Election campaign

The election campaign for the presidential and parliamentary elections began much earlier than the Chilean constitution, which provides for a campaign period of one month. However, the unusual nomination processes of the presidential candidates ensured that the election campaign received a lot of attention much earlier. The Chilean voters identified the fight against crime, reforms in the education and health system, the reduction of high unemployment and an increase in wages as key issues. Although this was known, the election campaign remained a disappointment for many observers; the candidates remained vague in their positions and the elaborate government programs were published late or not at all. The televised debates were primarily used by the candidates to discredit their competitors, rather than highlighting themselves and their positions. In the years since the transition, however, it has been common in Chilean election campaigns for candidates to try to occupy popular topics and to hold back with concrete proposals for solutions.

Frei's campaign

“We will live better” - Eduardo Frei s campaign slogan

Frei's government program was not to be drawn up by party representatives, as usual, but by independent persons. The Concertación hoped to be able to present Frei as modern and citizen-oriented, but this led to difficulties within the party alliance. The independent bodies, which were called "Oceanos Azules", put together the bases of a government program. After criticism arose in the parties that they did not want to be excluded from this process, commissions were formed in which representatives of the parties were now also seated. The results of the commissions were finally handed over to the candidate, but were rarely reflected in his final program.

In terms of content, Frei focused on social issues. He wanted to continue the policy of small steps to improve welfare that Michelle Bachelet had started, capitalizing on the popularity of the incumbent president. In the area of ​​health and education policy, he promised expanded benefits for newborns and higher wages for teachers. In terms of energy policy, he advocated solar systems in the Atacama Desert and increased biomass production in southern Chile.

The closer the election date came, the more the independent Marco Enríquez-Ominami caught up in polls. While Frei and he were 17 percent apart in June 2009, a month before the election it was only seven percent. In the Concertación camp, fear spread that Frei might even miss the runoff. All too harsh attacks could not afford Frei against his young opponent, however, as he was dependent on the votes of Enríquez-Ominami's supporters in a possible runoff election.

Piñeras campaign

“How we want Chile” - Sebastián Piñera's campaign slogan

Piñera led an election campaign that was very different from his last. In the previous presidential election he strongly attacked Bachelet: As a woman, she is likeable, but she lacks the character traits and skills to lead a country. This tough approach did not lead to success in 2005/2006 and, given the high approval ratings for the president, was not advisable. Instead, he praised Bachelet's previous government work and praised its social legislation. However, after 20 years in power, the government alliance is too exhausted to cope with the country's challenges. Instead, mistakes made by the Concertación urgently need to be corrected in some political areas and the future of the country must be shaped by an unused alternative.

He relied on positive messages in his election campaign. In terms of content, he focused on two topics, namely the fight against crime and the creation of a million new jobs through steady economic growth . As a successful entrepreneur, he advertised with his efficient management style. In terms of economic policy, he relied on tax breaks and the privatization of state-owned companies. He announced that he would sell part of the state corporation Codelco in order to make the world's largest copper producer more competitive.

Piñera always received a majority of the votes in polls, and one month before the election, almost half of Chileans assumed that he would win the election. Based on these assessments, Piñera avoided direct confrontations with his opponents, but left it to Frei and Enríquez-Ominami to steal votes from each other. Piñera received particularly high approval rates from higher educated classes; In the case of the socially disadvantaged and in rural regions, however, it was less able to score. This was mainly due to Piñera's image as a cool businessman. Many voters were also skeptical as to whether someone who already had a great deal of power in the economic field should also be given this power in the political field. On the other hand, it has been suggested that his large fortune should make him less prone to corruption .

Enríquez-Ominamis campaign

Campaign logo by Marco "ME-O" Enríquez-Ominami

Enríquez-Ominami came up with the campaign slogan “Marco por ti” - “Marco for you”. He led an election campaign that was tailored to his person and wanted to score points with his own life story and personal charm. In addition, he had the most modern campaign of the four candidates, during which he mostly appeared under the abbreviation "ME-O". He led an intensive online election campaign, for which he operated his own website, the layout of which was based on the common social networks . Because he used to work in the film industry himself, he showed himself to be very fluent in dealing with the media, which earned him a disproportionate amount of attention in reporting. In addition to the Chilean media, international media also reported on the “ME-O phenomenon”, including the renowned American news magazine Newsweek .

In terms of content, like his opponents, he remained cautious. He planned a reform of the binomial electoral law, but kept silent about the form. The health and education systems should be given a larger budget. He wanted to achieve the additional income necessary for this through higher taxes and higher levies from foreign companies. Like the conservative Piñera, Enríquez-Ominami primarily focused on the general mood of change in the country. On the one hand, as a young and fresh candidate, he distinguished himself from his older and more experienced competitors in the political world. On the other hand, he was more open than any of the other candidates against the existing political establishment .

Unsurprisingly, Enríquez-Ominami scored primarily with young voters with his campaign. Building on this target group, however, was risky, because in this presidential election the entry in the electoral register was still voluntary, so that the majority of the young voters had no right to vote. Enríquez-Ominami concentrated his election campaign on the big cities of the country, where he was much more popular than in the rural regions. That is why he only appeared at a few events in smaller cities with up to 20,000 inhabitants. His attacks were primarily directed against fellow competitor Eduardo Frei, as they both had the best chance of getting into the runoff election with Piñera. Polls a month before the election even gave the impression that Enríquez-Ominami would have better chances than Frei in such a runoff against Piñera.

Arrates campaign

Graffiti of an Arrate trailer

Arrate oriented his election campaign to Latin American countries such as Venezuela or Bolivia , in which left-wing governments had come to power. As there, he strove to re-establish the state. To do this, Chile needs a new constitution, political decentralization and complete nationalization of copper. He also planned to strengthen workers' rights by prohibiting the outsourcing of their labor to intermediate companies. Like his competitors Frei and Enríquez-Ominami, he aimed to reform the health and education system. He was also the only one of the four candidates to advocate demilitarization of the Chilean south.

Arrate's campaign was characterized by classic leftist positions. He was addressing a left core electorate, which was estimated at around four percent.

Results of the first ballot

Official final result of the first ballot
Candidate and electoral alliance be right in % Result
Piñera crop.jpg Sebastián Piñera
Coalición por el Cambio 		3,074,164 44.06 Runoff
Free crop.jpg Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle
Concertación 		2,065,061 29.60 Runoff
Enríquez-Ominami crop.jpg Marco Enríquez-Ominami
Nueva Mayoría para Chile 		1,405,124 20.14
Arrate crop.jpg Jorge Arrate
Juntos Podemos Más 		433.195 6.21
Valid votes 6,977,544 100.00
Invalid votes 200,420
Blank ballot papers 86,172
Votes cast 7,264,136
Registered voters 8,285,186

The first ballot took place on December 13, 2009. A total of around 8.25 million Chileans were entered in the electoral register and thus entitled to vote. Around 6.97 million took part in the election, so that the turnout was only 87.17 percent despite compulsory voting.

As predicted by the polls, Sebastián Piñera won this ballot with 44.06 percent of the vote. He had received over a million votes more than the runner-up and a lead of over 14 percent. Surprisingly, Piñera achieved the most votes in all 15 regions of Chile, even in the rural and poorer regions, whose residents are traditionally close to the candidates of the Concertación. Since he missed an absolute majority, a second ballot on January 17, 2010 was necessary to determine the future President of Chile.

The second most votes went to the candidate of the governing coalition Eduardo Frei with 29.6 percent. He reached the runoff against Piñera, but that was only the minimum goal of his campaign. In fact, the result was catastrophic for the Concertación, because in the presidential elections since 1989 its candidates had never received less than 45 percent of the vote. For the upcoming runoff election, Frei was seen as a clear outsider, but one fact gave his campaign team courage: In Bachelet's election victory four years earlier, the two candidates of the center-right alliance even got 48 percent of the votes in the first ballot. In the following runoff election, however, it was not enough for an election victory.

Marco Enríquez-Ominami achieved a respectable success with 20.14 percent of the vote and was only around nine percent behind the candidate of the government alliance. With over a fifth of the vote, he achieved the best result that an independent presidential candidate had achieved since 1989. Nevertheless, he missed the runoff election. The candidate of the left-wing alliance Juntos Podemos Más, Jorge Arrate, received 6.21 percent of the vote and could not qualify for the runoff election either. However, he achieved the left alliance's best result in presidential elections since 1989.

Parliamentary elections were held at the same time, and the trend towards presidential elections continued. All 120 seats in the House of Representatives and 18 of the 38 seats in the Senate were newly up for grabs. In the elections to the House of Representatives, the opposition center-right alliance reached 58 seats, which is the first time since the return to democracy that it won more seats than the Concertación, which received 57 seats. Even the pact with the Communist Party, which entered parliament with three members, could not prevent the narrow defeat. The government alliance did not succeed in winning both mandates in any of the 60 constituencies, the center-right alliance in one. The Concertación lost a mandate in the Senate, but was able to defend its narrow majority. The election victories of some RN candidates over well-known UDI senators caused a sensation nationwide. For example, the former presidential candidate Joaquin Lavín lost his Senate post to Francisco Chahuán . The candidates of the electoral alliance Nueva Mayoría por Chile, which Marco Enríquez-Ominami's presidential candidacy had supported, could neither win seats for the House of Representatives nor for the Senate, so that he too lost his seat in the House of Representatives.

Preparations for the second ballot

“Join the change” - Piñera's campaign slogan for the second round of voting
Eduardo Frei introduces Carolina Tohá as the new campaign manager

Since Piñera had won the first ballot by a large margin, there was no reason to change anything about his successful strategy. He and his campaign workers were still extremely present on the streets and in the media and continued to rely on positive messages in their professionally conducted campaign. He also stayed true to his campaign themes - fighting crime and creating new jobs. For the second ballot, however, he adopted a new campaign slogan. With the slogan "Súmate al cambio" ("Join the change") he presented himself as a bearer of hope for a new political beginning.

First of all, Frei rebuilt his campaign team. With Carolina Tohá , Claudio Orrego and Ricardo Lagos-Weber , he brought three well-known Concertación politicians on board, who were to lead his election campaign in the weeks before the runoff election. In particular, Tohá's involvement, who previously worked as Bachelet's government spokeswoman, was interpreted as a signal that President Frei wanted to give more support. Frei's campaign focused on getting the supporters of the two eliminated candidates to his side. This project received a rapid boost because Arrate called on his supporters early on to vote for Frei in the runoff election. The evangelical churches and the trade union confederation CUT also recommended voting for Frei.

Enríquez-Ominami was reluctant to assure Frei of his support and set conditions on which he attached his support. He called for the resignation of the four party leaders of the Concertación in order to achieve a rejuvenation of the leadership staff. He also expected several bills to be passed. Those in charge of the center-left alliance partially accommodated him: the chairman of the PPD, Pepe Auth , and the chairman of the PRSD, José Antonio Gómez, resigned from their leadership positions; the leaders of the Socialists and the Christian Democrats, however, refused to comply with this demand. President Bachelet also brought two urgent bills to Congress to strengthen public schools and reform electoral law. A few days before the runoff election, Enríquez-Ominami Frei finally agreed to support, but seemed very reluctant. In his speech he made it clear that only he would personally vote freely, but that this should not be understood as a call to his followers. In addition, he did not mention Frei by name, but only spoke of him as the "29 percent candidate".

In addition to the announcement that he would continue Bachelet's policy, Frei's campaign focused on two aspects before the second round of voting: On the one hand, he again underlined the closeness of the center-right alliance to Pinochet in order to appeal to older groups of voters. He wanted to convey to them that it made a difference whether a candidate from the Concertación or a representative of the center-right parties ran the business. During the preparations for the second round of voting, it became known that Frei's own father had also been killed by Pinochet's henchmen, which played into his cards. He also tried to emphasize that despite his age and his longstanding membership in the Concertación, he was definitely the right person to initiate an internal reform process and modernize the party alliance. In this way he tried to appeal to younger voters in particular.

Results of the second ballot

Official final result of the second ballot
Candidate and electoral alliance be right in % Result
Piñera crop.jpg Sebastián Piñera
Coalición por el Cambio 		3,591,182 51.61 winner
Free crop.jpg Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle
Concertación 		3,367,790 48.39
Valid votes 6,958,972 100.00
Invalid votes 189,490
Blank ballot papers 54,909
Votes cast 7,203,371
Registered voters 8,285,186

The second ballot took place on January 17, 2010. With a voter turnout of 86.25 percent, this was again lower than in the first round of voting. It was the lowest turnout since 1989. Again Sebastián Piñera was able to unite the most votes and achieved an absolute majority with 51.61 percent of the votes, so that he was elected as the new President of Chile. He was the first right-wing candidate since 1958 who could win the presidency in Chile in a democratic way. At the same time, he ended the winning streak of the Concertación, which has ruled since 1989, in presidential elections.

Piñera's competitor Frei received 48.39 percent; the gap of more than one million votes in the previous ballot had shrunk to just over 200,000 votes. He had made an impressive comeback, especially since Enríquez-Ominami had denied him direct support. With a difference of almost three percent, it was the second tightest presidential decision in Chile since the return to democracy. Forty minutes after the polls closed, Frei admitted his defeat and congratulated Piñera on his election victory.

After Piñera had won a majority of votes in all 15 regions of the country in the first ballot, he was able to win the runoff election in ten regions. Piñera clearly won the heavily populated capital city region and the Región de Valparaíso . He achieved the greatest advantage over Frei in the Región de Tarapacá , where he outperformed his opponent by more than 20 percent. The northern regions of Antofagasta , Atacama and Coquimbo and the central regions of O'Higgins and del Maule could freely decide for themselves. He achieved the greatest gap on Piñera in the Coquimbo region, where his lead was 11 percent.

Effects

Reactions

CUT chairman Arturo Martínez (r.) At an election rally with presidential candidate Frei (center)

Reactions to Piñera's election victory varied depending on the political camp in Chile: The national chamber of commerce welcomed the outcome of the election and called for a more flexible structure of labor law and a reduction in the minimum wage for 18 to 21-year-olds. The central umbrella organization of the trade unions, CUT, contradicted this and warned against cuts in employee rights. The CUT chairman Arturo Martínez feared that with a president of the right-wing camp, a different wind could blow in Chile from now on : “The employers now dare to express the barbarities that they previously did not dare to make public. You feel protected by the victory of one of your own. "

Human rights organizations were also critical of Piñera's success. The Association of Relatives of the Disappeared (AFDD) accused him of duplicity in dealing with the military dictatorship, because, on the one hand, he stressed that he had been against the dictatorship himself, but on the other hand, he believed that members of the military government who were not guilty of any crime could take up government posts again. His announcement that ongoing trials against members of the military dictatorship would be brought to an end during his term of office were interpreted by the AFDD as “setting the course for impunity” .

Future of the Concertación

One day after the electoral defeat, speculation began about the dissolution of the crisis-ridden Concertación. After two of the four party leaders resigned between the two ballots, the two remaining came under pressure. The youth organization of the Christian Democrats occupied the party headquarters and called for the resignation of chairman Juan Carlos Latorre . In all parties, members called for a rejuvenation and modernization of the respective party.

Different scenarios for the continuation of the Concertación were discussed: Since Piñera did not have its own parliamentary majority, he was dependent on the cooperation of other parties. It was therefore clear that he would try to involve the more moderate forces within the Concertación in his political decisions. The defeated candidate Frei assured after the election that his party alliance would not stand in the way of constructive cooperation with the center-right camp. However, there was a risk of an internal ordeal, especially for the PDC and the PRSD, which are more pragmatic than the two socialist parties of the Concertación. The coalition could break because of this, because the PDC and the PRSD could build a relationship of trust with the right-wing parties through good cooperation. The PS and PPD were not expected to be able to easily change their attitudes towards the right-wing camp in order to work with it. Concerned about the rights of workers and trade unions, the president of the PS, Camilo Escalona, ​​rejected the new government shortly after the election. Rather, the successful social policy of the past twenty years must be defended by all means. On the other hand, it was also seen as possible that the center-left parties could overcome their internal disputes, close their ranks, and subsequently both alliances would continue to exist.

During the reign of Piñera, little has changed in the formation of the bloc. At the next presidential elections, however, there was a realignment in the left-wing camp. The four parties of the Concertación were joined by other progressive splinter parties. In order to take account of the expanded political spectrum, the alliance came under the new name "Nueva Mayoría".

Formation of government and swearing-in

President Piñera presenting his cabinet

About three weeks after winning the runoff election, Piñera presented the new government on February 9 in the National Museum in Santiago. In contrast to previous Chilean governments, he did not allow himself to be guided by criteria such as gender, age or party affiliation. Instead, he planned to select the most likely candidate for each cabinet post. Instead of party members, he planned to fill his government with people from the economic and scientific environment.

With 22 ministers, Piñera's cabinet was the largest in twenty years. Only four people each belonged to the RN and the UDI, and most ministerial posts were filled by independent persons. Industrial engineers dominated the professions with eight ministerial posts, followed by economists with six and lawyers with four. The cabinet was dominated by men; only six ministries were led by women. With the Christian Democrat Jaime Ravinet even a member of the Concertación belonged to his government team, although he resigned from the party before he was sworn in. Originally, Piñera did not want to nominate members of parliament or election losers. It is difficult to convey to voters that a representative can no longer perform the tasks for which he was elected. In addition, cabinet posts are not a consolation prize. However, he moved away from both resolutions, because with Ena von Baer , Joaquín Lavín and Catalina Parot , three ministers were represented who had previously missed the leap into parliament. During a cabinet reshuffle in spring 2011, he also appointed Senators Andrés Allamand and Evelyn Matthei as ministers.

Piñera with his wife Cecilia Morel after the swearing-in

On March 11, 2010, Piñera was sworn in as the new President of Chile. The ceremony was influenced by the earthquake that had struck off the coast of the del Maule region just two weeks earlier. The quake and the following tsunami killed 600 people and caused billions in damage. Instead of a big ceremony in the capital Santiago, a simple ceremony took place in the port city of Valparaíso . A few minutes before the inauguration, the earthquake occurred in Pichilemu , which could also be clearly felt in Valparaíso and caused a large number of those present to be briefly excited. The swearing-in ceremony could nevertheless be held without further incident. The outgoing President Bachelet drew a positive conclusion to her reign and wished Piñera every success in his work. The President of the Senate, Jorge Pizarro, presented the presidential sash .

analysis

Most analyzes of the outcome of the Chilean presidential elections make it clear that Piñera owes his election victory primarily to the weak demeanor of the previous governing coalition. In particular, the decision to keep the internal selection process closed has proven to be a mistake. While primary elections usually strengthen the legitimacy of the chosen candidate, Eduardo Frei's position was weakened after his election. The exclusion of Marco Enríquez-Ominami gave the impression that the entire process was designed to keep competitive candidates away from the outset in order to enable Frei to make nominations as easily as possible. In response to the closed primaries, numerous well-known Concertación politicians turned their backs on the alliance, which documented its internal division. The decision to nominate former President Frei instead of a younger candidate may also have contributed to the defeat of the Concertación. Due to the chaos of his candidacy and his colorless personality, he always had to struggle with the stigma of simply being a compromise candidate. In the previous two presidential elections, the Concertación's selection of candidates had been the key to success, because both Lagos and Bachelet stood for continuity and renewal in equal measure. Free, on the other hand, represented the past of the government alliance. As a result, numerous analysts have come to the conclusion that voters would have voted against the Concertación rather than for Piñera.

Another building block for Piñera's success was that he was able to expand his electorate compared to the previous election. In the upper class, his approval was always high anyway. In this election, however, he managed to expand his support in the Chilean middle class, which formed the classical backbone of the Concertación. Frei, on the other hand, could only score points with the poorer classes. It is possible that Frei fell victim to the successful economic policy of the last twenty years at this point, because in the course of this policy numerous Chileans rose to the middle class, which Piñera specifically courted during the election campaign. In previous elections, the strict right-left distinction that separated those who opposed Pinochet and those who were in favor of Pinochet was still a major factor. Right-wing candidates had a harder time because of their ties to the Pinochet dictatorship. This aspect diminishes more and more and becomes less important for the voting from election to election. Belonging to the center-right camp was not a hindrance, especially for Piñera, because he represents a current that wants to come to terms with the past and recognizes the protection of human rights as a matter of course.

Another reason for Piñera's election victory was the greater unity within his alliance. There had always been disagreements between the RN and the UDI, which led to the fact that they each nominated their own presidential candidates. They then took each other's votes. In this election, only the Concertación was affected by this phenomenon of the distribution of votes, whereas Piñera's alliance conveyed unity and loyalty.

Enríquez-Ominami's respectable success in the first ballot can mainly be explained by the internal disputes of the Concertación. He positioned himself as a viable alternative for all those who were dissatisfied with the style of the ruling coalition but still did not want to switch to the center-right bloc. He also benefited from the high degree of personalization in Chilean politics, because he had good poll numbers, especially for personal attributes such as charisma and closeness to the people. The fact that it wasn't enough for him was mainly due to his young target group. Most of the young Chileans are not entered in the electoral register and are therefore not entitled to vote. In a poll that added up the preferences of eligible voters and those not eligible to vote, Enríquez-Ominami was just ahead of Frei and would have qualified for the runoff election. But it failed not only because of the weaknesses of the electoral law. Few believed him capable of governing and only 32 percent of voters found him mature enough for the presidency. Frei and Piñera each achieved values ​​of almost 60 percent in this key category.

literature

Web links

Commons : Presidential Election in Chile 2009/2010  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Winfried Jung / Martin F. Meyer: The beginning of a new era in Chile: Sebastián Piñera wins the presidential election against the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei . In: KAS Auslandsinformationen, Edition 3, 2010, pp. 76–101, here: pp. 82–83. - Last accessed: September 28, 2015.
  2. ↑ Yesko Quiroga: End of the Concertación ? Presidential and parliamentary elections in Chile. Brief reports from international development cooperation. December 2009, here: p. 1. - last accessed: September 7, 2015.
  3. ↑ a b Yesko Quiroga: end of the Concertación ? Presidential and parliamentary elections in Chile. Brief reports from international development cooperation. December 2009, here: p. 4. - last accessed: September 7, 2015.
  4. ↑ Winfried Jung / Anna Holst: The local elections of October 26, 2008 in Chile: Results and perspectives . KAS country report, November 18, 2008, here: p. 10. - last accessed: September 7, 2015.
  5. ↑ Winfried Jung / Martin F. Meyer: The beginning of a new era in Chile: Sebastián Piñera wins the presidential election against the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei . In: KAS Auslandsinformationen, Edition 3, 2010, pp. 76–101, here: p. 83. - Last accessed: September 28, 2015.
  6. ↑ Winfried Jung / Martin F. Meyer: The beginning of a new era in Chile: Sebastián Piñera wins the presidential election against the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei . In: KAS Auslandsinformationen, Edition 3, 2010, pp. 76-101, here: p. 85. - Last accessed: September 28, 2015.
  7. ↑ Peter Siavelis / Kirsten Sehnbruch: The Bachelet Administration: The Normalization of Politics? Center for Latin American Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Working Paper No. August 28, 2009, here: p. 1
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