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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/petras01252006.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/petras01252006.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>January 25,
2006<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000"><b>
Chile's New President<br><br>
<br>
</i></font>Washington's Best
Ally?</b></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5>By JAMES
PETRAS<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">O</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>n 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 (<i>Financial Times, Time
Magazine, Wall Street Journal</i>) and the major international financial
institutions (World Bank, IMF).<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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".<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Bachelet welcomed every chance to engage in military exercises with the
US offering logistical support for the last UNITAS operations.<br><br>
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 <i>El Mercurio</i>. 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.<br><br>
In an interview with <i>El Mercurio </i>(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".<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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