Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

December 20, 2017 By Fausta

Chile: Piñera wins

I haven’t had the opportunity to post about it, but I’m very glad Sebastián Piñera won last Sunday.

The Economist says A resounding win for the conservative candidate reaffirms Chileans’ centrist leanings, where

The result has shaken the centre-left. Mr Guillier, who ran as an heir to President Michelle Bachelet, called it a “hard defeat”. The bloc never recovered from a graft scandal in 2015 involving her son (though not the president herself). It has split over the pace and depth of her leftish reforms, such as higher corporate taxes, tighter labour laws and free college. In the first round Mr Guillier was nearly bested by the candidate of a new leftist party.

One of Bachelet’s proposals was to amend the constitution and use gains from the copper industry to pay for her social programs, a la Venezuela. Not a good idea.

The Economist correctly states, “Chile still looks most comfortable in the centre: at once pro-market and socially aware.”Piñera was the best choice.

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Filed Under: Chile, Fausta's blog Tagged With: Sebastian Piñera

October 25, 2016 By Fausta

Chile: Local elections go to Chile Vamos

Silvio Canto points out that Chile goes right on the anniversary of Allende’s election.

Reuters:

With over 99 percent of results counted on Sunday night in local elections, the right-leaning Chile Vamos pact emerged as the big winner. It won slightly more votes than President Michelle Bachelet’s left-leaning Nueva Mayoria coalition, despite the left going into the vote with a massive incumbent advantage.

Conservative candidates won the majority of key swing cities, including central Santiago, a municipality inside the capital that is considered an electoral bellwether.
. . .
The results should benefit Pinera, a conservative politician and businessman who served as president from 2010 to 2014 between Bachelet’s two terms and is widely expected to seek a return to office.

WSJ:

The election is the latest setback for Latin America’s left following the end of high commodity prices that drove economic growth for a decade. In August, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was ousted in an impeachment trial. Bolivian President Evo Morales’ proposal to change the constitution to run for another term was rejected in a referendum. Late last year, Argentine voters elected business-friendly President Mauricio Macri to overhaul his predecessor’s populist policies.

Or, as Bloomberg put it, Chile Voters Give Government a Bloody Nose and Peso a Boost

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Filed Under: Chile, elections Tagged With: Chile Vamos, Fausta's blog, Sebastian Piñera

January 27, 2015 By Fausta

Venezuela: Turned away at the prison gates

The Venezuelan government has turned down a request by former presidents of Chile and Colombia to visit opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez in jail (h/t HACER). Mexico’s former president Felipe Calderón would also been turned away, creating An impossible to avert PR mess for Maduro

Piñera and Pastrana have now a first hand account, a direct witness position on repression in Venezuela. They saw the Nazional Guards everywhere, they were both somewhat threatened by diverse hecklers and possibly by “security”, they experienced personally the harshness and autism of the regime, etc, etc.

“@AndresPastrana_ and @sebastianpinera enter Ramo Verde to meet with @leopoldolopez”

.@AndresPastrana_ y @sebastianpinera entran a Ramo Verde para reunirse con @leopoldolopez http://t.co/WcQ487pGp7 pic.twitter.com/lmnAiPqeGR

— Contrapunto (@contrapuntovzla) January 25, 2015

Maduro then doubled down and accused Piñera and Pastrana of enriching themselves from drug money (as if Piñera needed the money). This is particularly offensive to Pastrana, who was held prisoner by Pablo Escobar 27 years ago.

Pastrana, on his part, scored a dig or two on Maduro, referring to him as “my fellow countryman”, since Maduro may have been born in Colombia – which would disqualify Maduro from being president of Venezuela (video in Spanish),

Pastrana points out that he and Piñera went to the Ramo Verde jail on the regular visiting day, when no permits are required to see the inmates.

Just another day in the Communist Bolivarian Revolution.



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Filed Under: Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela Tagged With: Andrés Pastrana, Fausta' blog, Felipe Calderón, Leopoldo López, Nicolas Maduro, Sebastian Piñera

October 29, 2012 By Fausta

Chile: Everything old is new again

Chile’s local elections, yesterday, had a 40% turnout,
Chile local polls see low turnout with voting voluntary
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera says the decision by many Chileans not to vote in Sunday’s local elections is a “warning sign” that should be heeded.

The polls, the first to be held since voting was made voluntary, were marked by an abstention of 60%.

The elections are seen as an early indicator with just over a year to go before the November 2013 presidential race.

Mr Pinera’s centre-right alliance lost some key races, including in Santiago.

Carolina Toha, who worked as spokeswoman for former president Michelle Bachelet, was elected mayor of the capital, defeating the current incumbent Pablo Zalaquett.

However, centre-right candidates held onto several big cities, including Valparaiso.

Results suggest centre-left parties took about 43% of the vote, compared with 38% for parties allied to Mr Pinera.

Among the winners was Salvador Allende’s granddaughter, Maya Fernández Allende,

Fernandez, 41, defeated incumbent Mayor Pedro Sabat of the center-right National Renovation party in Nunoa, a district of the capital. A socialist and veterinarian by trade, she served on the local council in the district after growing up in Cuba, where her mother Beatriz lived in exile after President Allende died during Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup.

The left’s biggest victory was in central Santiago, where Carolina Toha defeated Pablo Zalaquett of the ultra-conservative Independent Democratic Union. Toha served as former President Michelle Bachelet’s spokeswoman, and her father, Allende’s vice president, died after being jailed and tortured.

The low turnout was apparently unaffected by the new rule giving the vote to foreigners living in Chile for at least five years.

Some of my sources in the country believe that the particularly nasty campaign may have turned off citizens from participating; many of the right-leaning mayors were targets of mud-slinging, obnoxious claims by the left. Student demonstrations, while stirring the left, may have demotivated others now that voting is not compulsory.

Does this mean the democratic process has been undermined? We shall find out by next year’s presidential election.

For now, Sebastián Piñera’s odds of re-election are not looking very good.

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Filed Under: Chile, elections, Latin America, politics Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Sebastian Piñera

October 18, 2010 By Fausta

Harry Reid: “Obama’s like a Chilean miner”

Yes, the POTUS is in way in over his head,
Obama is like a Chilean miner, Harry Reid says
President found himself in ‘a hole’ when elected to White House, but ‘rolled up his sleeves’

In a speech to supporters in Las Vegas on Sunday night, Reid said that when Obama replaced George W. Bush in the White House he found himself in a “hole so deep that he couldn’t see the outside world.

“It was like the Chilean miners, but he, being the man he is, rolled up his sleeves and said ‘I am going to get us out of this hole,’” Reid said at an “Early Vote GOTV” event.

As Michelle Malkin put it,

Sure, Obama is like a Chilean miner — stuck in a deep hole and dependent on competent, can-do Americans to get him out.

Jammie:

He’s in over his head, he’s leading a party that’s about to be buried by an avalanche in two weeks and he’s completely in the dark.

TPTB:

I agree with Harry Ried that Obama is like a trapped miner — both are in dangerously over their heads and begging for cigarettes

and TPTB’s commenter,

“I guess that would be an apt comparison if the Chilean miners had all grabbed their shovels and started digging downward to get out of the hole.”

Harry couldn’t compare Obama to Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, after all, Piñera understands what leadership is all about.

UPDATE:
Rush Limbaugh: “Obama’s still in it [the mine].”

23614
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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Democrats, Harry Reid Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Sebastian Piñera

March 12, 2010 By Fausta

Chile: The inaugural quake

A heck of a way to cut down the length of a speech,

Chile’s Inauguration Jolted by Aftershocks
Piñera Sworn In Quickly as Quakes Send Dignitaries Out of Hall, Serving Notice That Agenda Will Focus on Recovery

Three large aftershocks from last month’s massive earthquake struck just as Chile’s new president took power, delivering a tangible reminder that the forces that dominated his predecessor’s final days will also shape Sebastián Piñera’s new conservative administration.

Mr. Piñera, a 60-year-old billionaire elected on a pledge to run Chile like a business, was traveling by car to his inauguration in the port city of Valparaiso late Thursday morning when one 6.9 magnitude quake hit. Two more struck later, prompting officials to rush through the swearing-in ceremony, cancel the postinauguration luncheon, and evacuate the congress building of assembled dignitaries, who included Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe.

Outside, in an impromptu press conference, Mr. Piñera’s first act as president was to announce a tsunami warning. “Citizens who live on the coast, please follow the preventive tsunami alert,” Mr. Piñera said. “The most important thing right now is making sure everyone is safe,”

There were no reports of tsunamis or fatalities from the aftershocks, and the alert was lifted in the early afternoon.

It’s a testament to Chile’s infrastructure that a 6.9 earthquake did so little damage, particularly after the prior two recent earthquakes – the 8.8 earthquake two Saturdays ago, and the 6.0 aftershock last week.

The Journal made an error in the caption for the above photo, where they say,

At the inauguration, Bolivian President Evo Morales, left, President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, center, and Peru’s President Alan Garcia, right, joked that the aftershocks gave them “a moment to dance.”

The man on the right (but only in the photo, not politically) is Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador.

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Filed Under: Chile, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Fernando Lugo, Sebastian Piñera

January 18, 2010 By Fausta

Chile’s new president: 15 Minutes on Latin America

Pinera

In today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern,
Sebastian Piñera wins Chile’s presidency.

Related reading:
Market Watch: Billionare investor Piñera wins Chile presidency
Newsreal:
The Dominoes Begin to Fall: Chile’s Leftists Lose Presidency After 52 Years in Power

The Santiago Times: Piñera Defeats Frei In Chile Presidential Election
Op-ed at the Santiago Times, Memory Versus Hope, Frei Versus Piñera

(This election, like so many, is between the party of memory and the party of hope, past versus future. The Concertación’s only hope is that the majority of Chileans still take the left’s suffering during the Pinochet dictatorship so much to heart that they won’t vote for the presidential candidate they judge to be more closely allied to the dictatorship.

(Frei—and much more important—Frei’s father, the former Chilean President Eduard Frei Montalva (in office 1964-70) called for Marxist President Salvador Allende (1970-73) to be removed from office, by military coup if necessary. But they later were advocates of Chile’s return to democracy, and thus Pinochet opponents.

(Piñera, too, was a Pinochet opponent. He led the alliance of businessmen who loudly announced they would vote NO to Pinochet’s continuing in office in the crucial 1988 plebiscite. But his center-right political party, Renovación Nacional (RN), is allied with the farther-right UDI party, which is the home of most Pinochetistas.

Chile Stocks Surge In Early Trading On Pinera Pres Election
On the left, Nikolas Kozloff: Chile’s Presidential Election and Future of South American Left
WSJ: Chile’s Frei Concedes Defeat to Piñera
Juan Forero at the WaPo: Conservative billionaire businessman Piñera is elected president of Chile
NYT: Right-Wing Businessman Wins Chile’s Presidency

Prior post: Chile: Runoff election today

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Filed Under: Chile, elections Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Sebastian Piñera

January 17, 2010 By Fausta

Chile: Runoff election today

Report from Al-Jazeera from Lucia Newman, who used to love Castro when she worked for CNN in Cuba, painting Sebastian Piñera as “right wing” and implying he’d be sympathetic to the juntas of old days,

Juan Forero, reporting for the NYT, is more balanced, Chile race reflects Latin America’s growing preference for free-market centrists

Whether a billionaire businessman or a former president wins Chile’s presidential election Sunday, the outcome will reflect a broader trend in Latin America — the rise of the pragmatic centrist.

After years of victories by leftist candidates, market-friendly moderates are gaining ground in the region.

Some are emerging from the right, such as Sebastian Piñera, 60, an airline magnate who has held a razor-thin lead in the polls ahead of Chile’s runoff vote.

Political analysts say that Piñera and the ruling coalition candidate, Eduardo Frei, 67, who was president from 1994 to 2000, differ in style but not markedly in the substance of their proposals. Irrespective of whom voters choose, Chile is unlikely to veer from the centrist, free-market path that has brought the nation prosperity since the end of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1990.

Political analysts say the right is not making a comeback in Latin America, where a mix of leftist rabble-rousers and European-style socialists have taken power since a bombastic former army colonel, Hugo Chávez, won office in Venezuela in 1998 by pledging to overturn the old political order.

Instead, voters are showing a preference for moderates rather than firebrand nationalists who preach class warfare and state intervention in the economy, according to political analysts and recent polls.

“Voters are more calculating and rational than we give them credit for,” said Christopher Sabatini, senior policy director at the Council of the Americas in New York. “People are making the choice to support market economies and rational leaders.”

That was the case in Panama,

In Panama, Ricardo Martinelli, a supermarket-chain owner with close ties to the United States, won the presidency in May. In Brazil, the popular governor of Sao Paulo state, José Serra, enjoys a solid lead in the polls over his more left-leaning rival ahead of October’s presidential election. Polls show the winner in Costa Rica’s election next month will probably be the ruling party’s Laura Chinchilla, who is expected to closely hew to the current government’s market-friendly policies.

Even the Communists are calling themselves moderate,

But two prominent leftists who won office last year — former rebel José “Pepe” Mujica in Uruguay and Mauricio Funes, head of a party that was born out of the guerrilla movement in El Salvador — have highlighted middle-of-the-road policies.

They say they are inspired by the region’s most admired moderate, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. A former union activist, Lula is known for his innovative anti-poverty programs and a cautious oversight of the economy that has won Wall Street approval.

“The Latin American voter wants refrigerators and washing machines — they want prosperity,” said Marta Lagos, director of Chile’s Latinobarometro polling company, which surveys political attitudes in 18 Latin American countries. “They have abandoned the ideological flag.”

Hugo Chávez’s support in the region is at an all-time low of 27% approval rating, while 59 percent of Latin Americans surveyed last month said a market economy is best for their country.

Whatever the outcome of the election in Chile, the social policies will continue along with the judicious monetary policy.

This, along with Latin Americans’ new support of market economies, is great news for the region.

I’ll post more on the election once the results are in.

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Filed Under: Chile, elections, Latin America, politics Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Sebastian Piñera

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