[News] Chile's New President - Washington's Best Ally?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/petras01252006.html

January 25, 2006


Chile's New President


Washington's Best Ally?

By JAMES PETRAS

On January 14, 2006 Veronica Michelle Bachelet 
was elected President of Chile, by a margin of 54 
per cent to 46 per cent with 40 per cent 
abstentions, mostly from young people under 30 
years. Heading a coalition of two nominally 
"socialist" parties, the Christian Democrats and 
Radicals, her electoral victory was hailed by a 
vast political spectrum ranging from the Bush 
Administration to President Chavez, including all 
the big business media (Financial Times, Time 
Magazine, Wall Street Journal) and the major 
international financial institutions (World Bank, IMF).

As in their judgments of other recent elections, 
the progressives are wrong once again (or perhaps 
they have renounced their reformist agenda) and 
the right has reason to rejoice.

Progressives base their positive response to 
Bachelet's election on very skimpy grounds. They 
proclaim that she is the first women president in 
Latin America (forgetting that Margaret Thatcher 
was the first female Prime Minister of England), 
that she served a brief stint in Pinochet's jail; 
that she was the daughter of a loyalist Air Force 
General who served under deposed Socialist 
President Allende and was tortured to death; and 
the fact that she was a leader in the nominally "Socialist" Party of Chile.

Progressives reliance on identity politics is in 
sharp contrast with the historical materialist 
approach adopted by right wing political regimes 
and the big business press, which focus on her 
political practice over the past 15 years, her 
role as a Cabinet minister (Health and Defense 
Minister) and her unconditional adherence to 
neo-liberal free market policies and US regional military doctrine.

To understand the meaning of Bachelet's election 
and why the Bush regime is ecstatic one must 
delve briefly into the background of the 
so-called "Left-center" regimes, which have 
governed Chile over the past 16 years.

In 1988 the coalition called the "Concertación" 
defeated the dictator Pinochet in a plebiscite 
and the subsequent year defeated a pro-Pinochet 
candidate to win the Presidential elections. From 
1989 to the present, Chile has continued to be 
governed by the authoritarian constitution 
imposed by the dictatorship in 1980. The 
Concertación Presidential regimes (whether 
Christian Democratic or Socialist) not only 
accepted the fraudulent multi-billion dollar 
privatizations which took place under the 
dictatorships, but extended the practice to all 
sectors of the economy, including health, 
pensions and education. A report by Congressional 
Investigators (July 20, 2005) revealed that over 
$6 billions' worth of public lands and properties 
were illegally transferred to Pinochet 
functionaries. High military officials, involved 
in crimes against humanity, including Pinochet, 
continued in the highest positions for over a 
decade. Middle officers advanced to senior posts. 
Under the Concertación, Chile retained the 
dubious distinction of having the second worst 
inequalities of any country in South America.

The military continues to receive 10 per cent of 
copper revenues (off the top) right up to the 
present, a measure wholeheartedly supported by 
Bachelet when she war Defense Minister 
(2002-2004). Restrictive labor legislation 
prevents the trade unions and the labor movement 
from engaging in any industry-wide strikes, and 
most farm workers and loggers have few if any 
defenses against the predatory agro-business 
grape, wine and lumber producers. In contrast a 
new class of multi-millionaires dominates a 
highly monopolized economy in association with 
European and US multi-nationals, plundering the 
country's fishing, forest, water and mineral 
resources, seizing Indian lands and criminalizing 
the Mapuche Indian movements.

The Concertación claim to have reduced poverty 
from 48 per cent to 18 per cent is largely a 
statistical sleight of hand: a result of 
re-defining the poverty line to bare subsistence 
levels. More realistic estimates, based on an 
adequate standard of living would raise the figure to at least 40-45 per cent.

Equally important, the "Concertación" has lined 
up with the US ­ and in opposition to the rest of 
Latin America ­ as the most loyal disciple of 
free market economic policies, signing on to a 
bilateral version of the Latin American Free 
Trade Area and voting with the US against Cuba at 
the annual Geneva Human Rights meetings. The 
Socialist Party, from whose ranks the last two 
Presidents have been elected, has not only 
renounced every single policy implemented by 
President Allende (nationalization of copper, 
agrarian reform, industrial democracy, social 
welfare and protective labor legislation) but has 
"confessed" to having followed "erroneous 
policies". The right wing and Christian 
Democratic partners of the military coup in 1973 
have made no such "self-criticism".

Prior to the military coup, Bachelet supported 
the Popular Unity government to which her father, 
Air Force General Albert Bachelet was a loyal 
supporter. She was briefly detained along with 
tens of thousands of other Chilean progressives 
and eventually went overseas, receiving a 
scholarship to Humboldt University in Communist 
German Democratic Republic (GDR), where she 
became a supporter of the Hoeneker regime. 
Following the return to electoral politics 
Bachelet returned to Chile, became a member of 
the Central Committee of the "renovated" 
pro-neo-liberal Socialist Party. From her return 
to Chile to her election as President Bachelet, 
not only has she never questioned the impunity of 
the military who tortured her father to death, 
but she has embraced their national security 
doctrine, promoted numerous middle range officers 
who worked in Pinochet's CNI (the secret police) 
and is boastful of her intimate working relations with them.

Bachelet's transition from the GDR to the USA was 
consummated by her one-year stay at Fort McNair 
where she imbibed US "internal war" doctrine and 
counter-insurgency strategies. Unlike her 
father's path of rejecting imperialism and 
embracing socialist redistributive policies, 
Bachelet followed a path of "convergence with the 
hegemonic power" (her words), which in essence 
reads: Servile submission to US strategic 
dictates. Her earlier stint (2000-2002) as 
Minister of Health saw no improvements in the 
decaying public health system, no significant 
programs for the 50 per cent of the Chilean 
population which could not afford the private 
health programs and no effort to improve the 
failed private pension system, once declared by 
Washington as the "model" for the world. The 
private pension plans are currently under-funded 
by $1 billion dollars, management fees and other 
overhead expenses take up to 20 per cent of 
pension allocations. The International Labor 
Organization has called attention to Bachelet and 
her predecessors that only 58 per cent of 
pensioners would receive $120 a month, the other 42 per cent virtually nothing.

During Bachelet's stint as Defense Minister, 
Chile's military spending reached new heights: 
per capita military spending easily exceeded that 
of every government in Latin America. With 
multi-billion dollars spending on a new fleet of 
fighter planes, helicopters, war ships and 
satellite photography spy system, Chile was 
prepared to "converge" with US in policing the 
turbulent Andean countries. Bachelet was the US 
most forceful supporter in sending a military 
expeditionary force to Haiti to relieve US 
military forces in repressing the supporters of 
Aristide. Over 400 heavily armed Chilean soldiers 
patrolled the slum streets of Port au Prince in 
support of the US-imposed puppet regime.

Bachelet welcomed every chance to engage in 
military exercises with the US ­ offering 
logistical support for the last UNITAS operations.

Bachelet went beyond the usual protocols of a 
Defense Minister's relations with the military. 
Photo-ops embracing generals covered the front 
pages of the right-wing daily El Mercurio. Even 
more striking, Bachelet's effusive exuberance for 
the Generals included many of the Generals who 
served in Pinochet's secret police: 13 of the 30 
Generals with whom Bachelet collaborated were 
members of the notorious CNI, infamous for their 
torture and murder of political suspects.

In an interview with El Mercurio (1/22/06) 
Bachelet stated her whole-hearted support for the 
neo-liberal model, the maintenance of the 19 per 
cent regressive value added tax, opposition to 
any progressive tax or redistributive policies, 
and no positive legislation to redress the 
abysmal inequalities. Apart from promoting 
"education" in the middle range, she claimed that 
there was no "magic formula" for overcoming the 
gap between the rich and poor ­ including reform 
of Chile's workday ­ over 48 hours a week ­ the 
highest among 60 countries in the world, 
according to the rankings of the International 
Institute of Management. But to Bachelet passing 
labor legislation is an unattainable "magic formula".

With the returns of minerals breaking historical 
records, with a newly elected President high on 
military security, including "internal security", 
to forestall any social movements from below and 
rapid reaction battalions prepared to converge 
with US military interventions, it is no surprise 
that the Bush Administration and the US Embassy 
in Santiago call Chile Washington's best partner, 
a model for Latin America, the perfect client: a 
foreign investors paradise. By the same token, a 
working persons' inferno and a threat to Andean social movements.

Bachelet's rise to power demonstrates that 
political power is stronger than kinship ties, 
class allegiance are more powerful than identity 
politics, that past leftist affiliation are no 
hindrance to becoming Washington's best ally in its defense of empire.


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