Profile : Chile Trying to Live With Democracy . . . and Pinochet : The dictator turned over power last year but he still commands the army. He just won’t go away.

When Gen. Augusto Pinochet turned Chile’s government over to elected civilians last March, few expected the feisty dictator to retreat permanently from the front lines of national power. And sure enough, true to form, Pinochet keeps returning to the political fray, showing up on front pages and television screens in his familiar white jacket with brass buttons and red trim.

He clings tenaciously to his remaining role as army commander in chief, using it to play power politics with a bold and cantankerous style that is all his own. Dramatic military gestures make it clear that the army stands firmly united behind Pinochet in the face of scandals involving his officers and his own children.

Everyone knows they can’t be fired. The Communist Party calls his army a “parallel power” but proposes no radical action. Moderate political leaders urge prudence and caution.

And so, while Chile learns to live again in democracy, it also is learning once again to live with Pinochet, the ex-dictator who won’t go away.

He is 75 years old now. His bristly mustache has turned white, his once-square shoulders slump and his heavy jowls sag.

Pinochet’s iron will, however, seems as unyielding as ever, and his control over the army is currently unquestioned.

Some say he is a charismatic father figure to officers, as well as a symbol of what they view as the army’s patriotic contribution to Chile during 16 1/2 years of military rule.

“They see him as a leader, a man of decision--here we say ‘a man with pants,’ ” said retired Col. Cristian Labbe, a former Pinochet aide who remains close to the general.

In an interview, Labbe said Pinochet is a man of few words but a warm and jovial colleague who prizes loyalty. “He listens a lot. He is very loyal to his people.”

As the army’s commander in chief in 1973, newly appointed by then-President Salvador Allende, Pinochet led a bloody military coup that toppled Allende’s coalition government of Socialists and Communists. Allende himself was killed during the overthrow.

In March, 1990, under a constitution drafted to his specifications, the general handed power over to President Patricio Aylwin’s coalition government of Christian Democrats and Socialists.

The constitution permits Pinochet to remain in command of the army until 1997. He may not last that long, but for now he appears to be solidly entrenched.

A few months ago, it seemed to some that Pinochet’s position was increasingly weak. New revelations and old charges of human rights violations under his regime were receiving massive publicity in the Chilean media, casting a harsh light on the Pinochet years.

At the same time, surfacing financial scandals raised serious questions about a widely held notion that the Pinochet government was--by Latin American standards, at least--relatively free of corruption.

All of this undermined remaining political support for Pinochet. He seemed isolated, vulnerable. There were rumors, reinforced by an anonymous letter signed “Members of the Army,” that some officers wanted him to resign.

Last December, government officials say, Pinochet hinted through emissaries that he was willing to negotiate his retirement from the army. But army officers contend that it was Defense Minister Patricio Rojas who proposed Pinochet’s resignation on Dec. 19.

Rojas has denied making that proposal, but Labbe insisted that it was an “ultimatum.”

The same afternoon, Pinochet stunned the country by ordering all army units confined to barracks, a drastic alert measure usually taken only at moments of military emergency. He called it a routine exercise, but it was a clear warning.

“It meant that the army did not accept the ultimatum,” Labbe said.

In the words of Sergio Bitar, secretary general of the socialist Party for Democracy in the governing coalition, Pinochet was saying: “I am prepared to go considerably further. Don’t provoke me. Don’t attack me.”

“Pinochet was completely out of control that day,” added Bitar, 50, who spent a year in a frigid island prison camp and 10 years in exile after Pinochet’s coup.

A second warning came Jan. 8, when army generals issued a declaration of their “unrestricted loyalty” to Pinochet.

The statement warned that an “irresponsible and systematic” campaign of aggression against Pinochet was a “grave threat to national security.”

Chilean analysts say a military coup is highly unlikely. But Bitar said secret messages from Pinochet associates have raised the threat of pocket revolts in army units, similar to those staged by rebellious officers in neighboring Argentina, if pressure on the general continues.

The financial scandal that has embarrassed Pinochet most directly involves his oldest son, Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, a private arms dealer. A congressional commission found that the army issued three checks to Pinochet Hiriart for a total of nearly $3 million in January, 1989.

The checks were payment for the army’s purchase of privately held shares in a rifle manufacturing company. Pinochet Hiriart said he was acting for friends as an unpaid go-between in the transaction, which involved repayment of a private foreign loan that he had obtained for the rifle company as a favor.

Another scandal revolves around a Supreme Court justice’s investigation of a clandestine finance syndicate, called La Cutufa, that received deposits from active and retired army officers. It is unclear what kinds of activities were financed by La Cutufa, which allegedly was operated by two army captains who also were secret police officers.

Late in December, Justice Marcos Libidinsky temporarily detained three retired generals, including a former chief of the secret police, for questioning in the case. Pinochet sent an active general to protest the detentions before the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Retired Capt. Patricio Castro, one of the former secret police agents said to be responsible for La Cutufa, also has been implicated in the slaying of restaurateur Aurelio Sichel. According to testimony in the murder case, La Cutufa owed Sichel about $800,000.

Hugo Salas Wenzel, a retired army general and former director of the now-disbanded secret police, sold the suburban Santiago site of a notorious detention compound called Villa Grimaldi to a company formed by his wife, his sister and his brother-in-law.

Lucia Pinochet, the general’s oldest daughter, is a key figure in yet another scandal. She and her former husband started separate insurance agencies that received commissions on irregular sales of private policies to government entities.

Another cause of concern for Pinochet is a presidential commission’s investigation of deaths and disappearances during repression by the military government. The commission’s report, to be delivered to Aylwin early in February, will be made public in March.

Lawyer Raul Rettig, chairman of the commission, has said its report will not include names of security forces personnel responsible for deaths and disappearances. But it is expected to place a heavy burden of blame on army officers.

Pinochet recently called the commission “a sewer drain.”

Jose Joaquin Brunner, a researcher with a private think tank named the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, said the human rights issue is “the most potentially destabilizing element” in government-army relations.

Brunner said he thinks Pinochet’s tough position in recent weeks, including the Dec. 19 barracks alert, are a show of force in preparation for possible confrontation over the Rettig commission’s report.

And Pinochet is not one to avoid risky confrontation, according to Brunner.

“Pinochet feels comfortable closer to the abyss than farther from the abyss,” the sociologist said. “What he knows is war, not politics. . . . I believe what he is seeking is to be on a war footing with the government.”

Brunner said other army commanders appear to be solidly behind Pinochet.

Labbe argued that Pinochet has taken a political position because of a long campaign by politicians to undermine the prestige of the general and the army. He also blamed much of the army-government friction on Rojas, calling him “tremendously anti-military.”

In mid-January, Aylwin and Pinochet held a meeting that some analysts say may have been the beginning of more direct communications, bypassing Rojas and other officials.

“We believe that the direct connection between the president and the commander in chief of the army is excellent news and is the best thing that can happen to solve the misunderstandings that have existed up until now,” said Miguel Otero, vice president of the right-wing National Renovation Party.