What’s Wrong in Chile – Why is Center/Right President So Unpopular

Unrest Plagues One of South America’s Great Success Stories

Because people in the United States believe that the sun rises and sets only on the United States, (ok, literally it does, but then it does on every country) they tend to pay little attention to other countries, particular other countries in the same hemisphere.  But in doing so they overlook what is going on with the neighbors, and it is often interesting and informative stuff.

The Financial Times has published a special section on Chile.  (Note: special sections like this are in part supported financially by the subject, so bear that in mid while reading the articles.)  And the news is mostly good

Despite a devastating earthquake in early 2010, the economy grew by more than 5 per cent last year, and more than 8 per cent in the first half of 2011.

Unemployment is near record lows, and real wages are rising.

The country’s biggest companies are well-managed, in good health and expanding abroad: Lan, an airline, has the fifth largest market capitalisation of any in the world and is about to get bigger still when its merges with Brazil’s Tam.

Chile also is better insulated than most, should the global economic picture grow gloomier. True, it is the world’s largest producer of copper, the price of which could fall sharply if fears of a global recession take hold.

Yet the country also has no sovereign debt to speak of, and has almost $20bn stashed in sovereign wealth funds abroad.

But there is substantial unrest

On August 25, more than 100,000 students took part in a march in Santiago demanding free education and other reforms. This degenerated into pitched battles with the police, who then doused the capital’s streets with tear gas.

Housewives have banged saucepans in support of the student cause. And at the end of August, the country’s largest trade union confederation sought to bring Chile to a halt in a two-day general strike – the most ambitious stoppage since the late 1980s.

And the President whose center-right government took office 19^th has just a 22% approval rating.  Why, well maybe this is a clue

even though poverty has fallen, it is also one of the most unequal economies in the world: more than half of national income is earned by the richest 20 per cent of the population, according to OECD figures

And the President is right out of the Mitt Romney casting company

The billionaire ex-businessman is widely recognised as intelligent, driven, hard working and technically competent.

Yet even allies admit his hyperactive managerial style, while it may be appropriate in the business world, can mean he comes across as lacking emotional intelligence and charisma.

To run the country like a company is to fail to recognise that “a state and a business are very different,” says Eugenio Tironi, a sociologist and author of a new book on Mr Piñera: Why don’t they love me?

At the same time, his personal fortune, put at more than $2bn by Forbes, combined with a cabinet packed with other wealthy businessmen, has made his government seem out of touch.

When, for example, he first confronted the students’ demands for free education. Mr Piñera said: “nothing in life is free”.

Anyone see a Mr. Romney in that description and a possible forecast of the U. S. in 2013-16?

And because the Financial Times report is a “puff piece”, see Note above, we have this from the Guardian. 

Before democracy Chile has the reputation of a brutally repressive regime, and here is what is happening with Camila Vellejo, a 23 year old student leader.

Vallejo, a 23-year-old geography student, was singing and marching with a handwritten sign when a squad of military vehicles closed in and attacked her with jets of tear gas. A pair of trucks mounted with water cannons unleashed a barrage of water fierce enough to break bones and scrape a person across the pavement. Vallejo was soaked, a cloud of tear gas was then blasted on to her body. With her skin wet, the chemical reaction was massive and incapacitating. Vallejo was paralysed. Her body went into an allergic reaction and welts from the gas erupted over it.

And there is this

Over the next four hours, journalists were beaten and 250 people arrested. Twenty-five police were injured as masked youths with paint bombs and handfuls of rocks counter-attacked. All Thursday afternoon, downtown Santiago was awash in running street fights between heavily armoured police units and hundreds of protesters decked in shorts and tennis shoes, with scarves to shield them from the gas.

So it is not hard to see why the government has a 22% approval rating.  As for the opposition,  the previous ruling party is also being held responsible and

the once beloved coalition known as La Concertación, which organised the overthrow of Pinochet and then ruled Chile from 1990 to 2010, has fallen into political obsolescence

This is leaving an opening for a student led political rebellion.

Interesting times in Chile.