Tight Race Is Testimony to Democracy in Chile

No matter what happens in today’s presidential election, Chile will make history.

If Ricardo Lagos wins, he will become the first Socialist president since Salvador Allende was overthrown by a U.S.-backed military coup in 1973 and died as planes bombed the presidential palace.

If Joaquin Lavin wins, he will become the first rightist president since Gen. Augusto Pinochet obeyed the wishes of the voters following a 1988 referendum and relinquished power after more than 16 years of dictatorship.

And if the pollsters are right and neither candidate wins this close-fought race outright, Chile will hold its first presidential runoff election in January. That competitiveness reflects the advances in Chile’s democratic transition, which has only accelerated since Pinochet’s arrest in London last year by British police acting on a Spanish judge’s warrant.

As long as Pinochet draws breath, he will cast a shadow over Chile. But despite the headlines his captivity on charges of human rights abuse generates here and abroad, despite the emotions he ignites on the ideological extremes, the 84-year-old ex-dictator and the past he reflects have by no means dominated the presidential race.

On the contrary, as both candidates barnstormed recently through verdant southern Chile, they talked about unemployment, which after a decade of economic well-being has doubled to 11%. They talked about rising crime. They talked about stalled social reforms; Chile is the only Western democracy that still outlaws divorce, for example.

Neither the candidates nor the voters, however, had much to say about Pinochet.

“It’s healthy because this is a nation thinking about the future,” Lagos mused in a recent interview here in Chillan, a medium-sized city in the south. “And Pinochet has become part of the past. . . . In Chile, he is an old issue.”

Lagos, 61, retains an edge in most polls--up to 6 percentage points in a survey last week. An economist with a doctorate from Duke University in North Carolina, he has a cerebral, dignified style and social democratic philosophy that have been compared to those of leaders such as President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil and former Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez of Spain.

In the 1990s, Lagos fortified his resume as public works minister and education minister; in the latter role he struck down a law forcing pregnant teenagers to drop out of school.

But his political strength originated largely in an electrifying act of defiance in 1988, when he led the drive to vote Pinochet out of power. During a television appearance, Lagos pointed at the camera and addressed the feared dictator by name, denouncing with unprecedented vehemence the regime’s tyranny and torture. By early 1990, the dictator was out, replaced by an elected president.

Today, Lagos promises a referendum on the Pinochet-era constitution that gives the right wing and the military disproportionate power through appointed senatorial seats and other undemocratic mechanisms. Voters want fundamental change, he said.

“People are concerned about bread-and-butter issues, but they know that other things are needed,” he said. “I talked yesterday to university students and said we have made certain advances but we still haven’t changed Pinochet’s laws on higher education because we don’t have a majority in Congress.”

Candidates of the Christian Democratic Party, long dominant in the center-left coalition, won the presidency in 1989 and 1993. Yet Lagos lost primaries for the presidency and a Senate seat earlier this decade: There were questions about whether Chileans would vote for a Socialist because of the disastrous memories associated with the overthrow of Allende. Today, however, fears of a backlash against an eventual Socialist victory have subsided.

In fact, at the start of the campaign, Lagos’ formidable appeal made the race seem lopsided. But Lavin soon erased the wide margin in opinion polls and forced Lagos into a tough battle.

Money is a big factor behind Lavin’s surge. Business leaders have helped him amass a campaign war chest that dwarfs Lagos’ funding. Lagos’ campaign is out-funded 6 to 1, his advisors say, though Chile does not require official reporting of political contributions.

Moreover, the popularity of the ruling coalition slumped this year along with the economy. After a decade of strong growth rates and falling poverty indicators, the repercussions of a regional economic crisis centered in Brazil earlier this year hurt Chile’s globalized economy. Even some government officials admit that their attempts to deal with the problem may have made matters worse.

Lavin also has run a modern, aggressive and skillful campaign. Capitalizing on his success as the admired mayor of the municipality of Las Condes--the Beverly Hills of the capital, Santiago--he has reinvented himself and the Chilean right. The onetime Pinochet partisan has distanced himself from the ex-dictator. He expresses approval of recent prosecutions of military officers for crimes committed during the military regime and says Pinochet should stand trial if he returns from Britain.

Moreover, Lavin has managed to cast Lagos as an emblem of a stodgy establishment and himself as the candidate of change. During visits to remote corners of the frozen south and the northern deserts, he has donned folkloric costumes, surrounded himself with working people and even stayed as a guest in humble homes.

“People are worried about their daily problems: crime, employment, health, education,” Lavin’s top advisor, Cristian Laroullet, said during a recent interview. “Lavin is a politician who is close to the people, charismatic and pragmatic, who has concentrated on these issues. . . . He is better prepared. Lagos is an old, traditional leader.”

In the tradition of Pinochet-era technocrats, Lavin, 45, has an economics degree from the University of Chicago. A member of the ultraconservative Opus Dei movement of the Roman Catholic Church, he opposes abortion and divorce. (Lagos favors the legalization of divorce but not abortion.)

Lavin was a university dean during the military regime and an editor for El Mercurio, one of Chile’s leading newspapers.

“This election will mark a change: young people, different people,” Lavin told El Mercurio late last month. “And there are value differences as well. Coming from Christian roots makes a difference.”

Despite the talk of change and values, Lavin’s foes say that, beneath his perpetual smile and folksy ways, the candidate still represents the militaristic, intolerant conservatives of yore. They say the shift away from Pinochet is an opportunistic political tactic.

“It’s a lot of marketing,” Lagos said. “But ultimately, he and his people are all sons of Pinochet.”

The numbers still favor Lagos. The governing center-left coalition, the Concertacion, wins most elections handily. The current race is close partly because of the presence of four independent candidates, especially Gladys Marin of the Communist Party, a dynamic figure expected to garner about 6% of the vote. Marin’s old-school Communists, who blast Lagos and Lavin alike, are strong among Chile’s disillusioned youth, hundreds of thousands of whom usually do not vote.

If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, most supporters of Marin and two other left-leaning candidates are likely to back Lagos in the runoff, worsening Lavin’s chances.

Today’s results will resolve another debate. The Lagos forces and some analysts criticize polls and media reports suggesting that Lavin has neared or overtaken Lagos among prospective voters. Pollster Marta Mori, for example, feels that Lavin’s strength has been exaggerated because of his popularity among the Santiago elite.

“The agendas of the people and the elite appear to be different,” Mori said. “When the question is who they think will be president, 55% of the people say Lagos. . . . The media have installed the idea of a virtual tie.”

However, if Lavin pulls off an upset today, the Chilean right will have recaptured the presidency that Pinochet won with tanks and lost at the ballot box.