Chile: Nine visions of the same country
• Presidential and parliamentary elections November 17

Laura Bécquer Paseiro

THREE women and six men are running as presidential candidates for the period 2014-2018. Chileans will chose on November 17 – in a first round, and on December 15 in a second round if necessary – the national project they want after four years of the Sebastián Piñera government.

There are also parliamentary elections in mid-November and the first elections for regional councilors working in provincial public bodies.

Debates among candidates have focused on central issues in the country such as education (which became a headache for the current administration in 2011), health and the economy.

Opinion polls place as favorite former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), representing the Nuevo Mayoria (New Majority), which groups together politicians from the Concertación and the Communist Party. The Chilean pediatric physician, daughter of a General who supported socialist President Salvador Allende, proposes a profound educational reform to reach, among other objectives, universal gratuity in higher education within a six-year period.

In order to finance this sector, Bachelet proposes to raise corporate taxes as part of general taxation reforms. She also intends to undertake a reform of the Constitution to replace the current one, inherited from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. With this she is also seeking to change the electoral system, recognize the rights of indigenous peoples, of identity and sexual orientation, and to increase citizens’ participation.

In the health context, Bachelet promised the construction of more hospitals and doctors’ offices for primary health care, among other measures.

Close to Bachelet in the polls are two right-wing representatives, the daughter of a General in the Pinochet dictatorship, governing party candidate Evelyn Matthei, and the independent candidate Franco Parisi. In the run up to the elections, neither of the two has more than a 15% voting intention and could fail to make it to a second round.

Matthei, President Piñera’s former Minister of Labor, became the government option after Pablo Longueira unexpectedly withdrew his candidacy due to depression. Her government program supposes a continuity of Piñera’s government policies. Thus, the economist speaks of improving the Constitution rather than the profound reform proposed by her rival Bachelet. Another of the government’s central platforms is promoting higher economic growth by stimulating small and medium businesses. In relation to education, it defends the idea that education should not be universally free of charge.

Within the same right-wing political spectrum but with an independent candidacy is Parisi, an economics professor and government advisor. His proposals include modifications to the education system with shorter university careers in public institutions and free of charge, in addition to giving special importance to tax reforms in which "who earns more, pays more."

The electoral battle also includes ecologist Marcel Claude (Humanist Party) and Marco Enríquez-Ominami (Progressive Party). The former proposes a public and universal health system which will allow for comprehensive attention for all, in justice and dignity, as well as the incorporation into the system of indigenous peoples’ medicines. In the economic context, Claude advocates the re-nationalization of copper and the recovery of all the country’s wealth as an urgent goal. For the economic advisor to a number of social and labor organizations, the income from copper, accompanied by taxation reforms, could finance a state public and free education system.

For his part, Marco Enríquez-Ominami is proposing the imposition of a differentiated tariff on state universities in which students pay a maximum of one third of the autonomous per capita income.

The list of candidates is completed by Roxana Miranda (Equality Party), Tomás Jocelyn-Holt Letelier (independent), Alfredo Sfeir (Green Ecologist Party) and Ricardo Jacob Israel (Independent Regionalist Party).