LATIN AMERICA : Rumbles on Left, Right in Chile Politics : Sunday’s municipal elections showed there may be support for presidential candidates from both sides of the centrist Christian Democrats.

Results of this country’s first municipal elections in two decades have reinforced challenges from the right and left to the Christian Democratic Party’s favored presidential candidate for 1993.

The “pre-candidate” to beat next year is Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, son and political heir of the late Christian Democratic President Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970).

But the Christian Democrats’ Socialist partners in the governing coalition and the conservative opposition both see signs in Sunday’s municipal returns that 1993 could offer them a chance against Frei.

The late Socialist President Salvador Allende held power from 1970 to September, 1973, when he died in a military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet allowed no new elections until 1989, when Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin won a four-year term as president on a coalition ticket.

The main coalition partners are the centrist Christian Democrats, the Socialists and the Party for Democracy, or PPD, which includes many former Socialists. In Sunday’s voting, Socialists and the PPD together won 18%, while the Christian Democrats won 29%.

That 29% is normal for the Christian Democrats. But the party’s leaders had hoped for a larger percentage to reinforce their dominance in the governing coalition and their position as Chile’s predominant political force.

Two allied conservative parties, National Renovation and the Independent Democratic Union, together with independent supporters won 30%. The conservatives now are thinking that, if the governing coalition breaks up, they may beat the Christian Democrats in 1993.

The Center Center Union, a party founded by right-wing populist Francisco Javier Errazuriz, won 8%. It is unclear now what role Errazuriz might play in 1993, but he conceivably could be a spoiler for either the conservatives or the Christian Democrats.

The Christian Democrats say the municipal elections prove that their coalition is successful and should stick together. But Socialist Ricardo Lagos, the education minister and one of Chile’s most popular politicians, said the municipal results prove that he is a viable candidate for the presidency.

The votes won by the Socialists and the PPD “ratify the decision of these parties to present a presidential candidate,” Lagos said. That puts him on course for a clash with Frei and the Christian Democrats.

Juan Sandoval, a Christian Democrat who won election to the city council in the southern city of Puerto Montt, said this week that a Lagos candidacy “could again provoke a military revolt that we would have a hard time overcoming in the future.” Few others would go that far.

But some analysts say a surprising 6.6% of national ballots for Communist candidates Sunday oblige the Socialists and the PPD to present their own presidential candidate rather than support a Christian Democrat. Otherwise, the Communist Party could continue to draw votes away from the Socialists and PPD, those analysts say.

They say part of the votes for Communists were to protest continued poverty and social injustice under Aylwin’s government. Since Sunday, the government has been promising to strengthen social programs. It also has emphasized plans to push for electoral and constitutional reforms that leftists have been demanding.

The 1980 constitution, written to Pinochet’s specifications, has permitted the former dictator to stay on as army commander. It also gives the armed forces a strong voice in the National Security Council and keeps rightists appointed by the military regime in the national Senate, where the government lacks a majority.

By trying to change such constitutional provisions, the government could irritate Pinochet and the army. But the government’s record of handling military matters judiciously, and the political maturity reflected in Sunday’s municipal elections, make it unlikely that any crisis would seriously threaten Chile’s reborn democracy.