Sebastian Pinera leads Chile's loaded tilt to the right

Chile’s new billionaire leader has just gotten substantially wealthier after the value of shares soared in the wake of his election victory. Sebastian Pinera won the country’s run-off election last weekend and since then his 25 percent shareholding in Chile’s LAN Airlines SA have increased in value by two fifths giving the company a value of over $1.5 billion. Stock market officials halted trade and triggered an automatic investigation which happens whenever share prices increases by more than 20 per cent in one day's trading. Pinera refused calls to sell the shares before the election.

Outgoing president Michelle Bachelet, who was constitutionally barred from seeking re-election, had raised conflict-of-interest questions over Pinera's LAN stake during the presidential campaign. He did however promise he would divest the shares after the election and he reaffirmed that promise last week. He has also set up a blind trust to manage $500m of his fortune including ownership of the country's four television networks and Chile’s biggest football club Colo-Colo.

The obvious comparison for Pinera is with Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi. Both are right-wing wealthy businessmen who won their countries' elections with the help of their media empires and soccer teams. However Andres Oppenheimer says the comparisons are facile and notes five significant differences. Pinera has a PhD and taught economics at Harvard, he has been a senator for 20 years, his business record is free from scandal, he is a family man married for 36 years and he may be less of a right-winger than many think. Oppenheimer said Pinera opposed Pinochet in the 1980s (though others dispute this) and is liberal on social issues.

But there is no doubting his huge war chest helped him win the election. By last week’s runoff election with former president Eduardo Frei, Pinera had spent at least $13.6 million on the campaign. His victory marked a political shift as candidates of the governing Concertacion coalition had won all four presidential elections since 1989 on pledges of eradicating all traces of Pinochet’s leadership. Although 73 percent of Chileans still despise the former dictator, Pinera won because the coalition was split between two presidential candidates.

In the first vote on 13 December, Pinera took 44 percent of the vote with Frei second on 29 percent. Frei might have expected to pick up the remaining left-wing vote in the second ballot. After all, Concertacion had succeeded in reducing Chile’s poverty rate from over 40 percent to approximately 15 percent, while boasting the region’s most impressive growth rate since 1990. Former president Bachelet left office with an approval rate of over 80 percent. Yet Frei could not galvanise that support and his campaign slogan of “a vote for Pinera is a vote for Pinochet” fell flat. Frei did succeed in closing the gap as the run-off date came closer. But when Chile’s voters went to the polls on 17 January just enough of them decided they wanted to see change. Pinera won by 52 percent to 48.

There is at least one leftwing leader in the region who is unperturbed by Pinera’s win. Bolivian president Evo Morales, who himself was recently re-elected president (after changing the country’s constitution to allow him to stand), saluted the new Chilean leader and said he hopes he can continue the improvement in Bolivian-Chilean relations. Morales said he hoped Pinera will continue the bi-national dialogue started by “compañera” Michelle Bachelet. Relations between the two nations has been historically frosty since Chile won the War of the Pacific against Peru and Bolivia in the late 1800s, taking control of nitrate and mineral-rich lands and forcing Bolivia to lose its access to the Pacific Ocean. Bachelet was the first Chilean leader willing to discuss the issue with Bolivia and Morales hopes Pinera will continue the dialogue.

Sucre riots test Morales' resolve for change in Bolivia

A power struggle between Bolivian president Evo Morales and his conservative opponents has now erupted on a new front: the status of the country’s constitutional capital Sucre. Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas on protesters in Sucre on the weekend. The protesters were demanding the full relocation of the country’s legislature and seat of government from La Paz.

So far two civilians and one policeman have died and a further 130 people have been injured in street clashes that have gone in the third day. Protesters hurled rocks, Molotov cocktails and dynamite at police. Morales blamed former president Jorge Quiroga and “criminal groups” for the riots. Morales easily defeated Quiroga in the last election and he (Quiroga) leads the right-wing coalition known as the Social and Democratic Power. Morales said some groups don’t accept an indigenous leader.

Morales was speaking in the wake of the Bolivian parliament approval of a new constitution. The controversial changes would permit his indefinite re-election and would give central authorities greater control over public revenue at the expense of state governments. Morales’s opponents still control the Senate and boycotted the vote. They say the new constitution unfairly reduces the power of Bolivia's nine states. Wealthy Sucre has become a fulcrum for opposition demands for civil disobedience in the regions they govern.

Land redistribution has been a key issue in Bolivia for the last fifty years. Morales’s Movement towards Socialism (MAS) party made a comprehensive agrarian reform plan a central plank of the new constitution. Morales and MAS is trying to overturn decades of land redistribution which has ended up with 4 percent of the landowners possessing 82 per cent of the land. The government believes the constitutional changes will fulfil economic and social provisions aimed righting injustices against the indigenous population.

Bolivia remains the poorest country in South America. The poverty is concentrated in the Indian population which makes up 60 percent of the population. Infant mortality has halved to 60 deaths per thousand due to recent improvements on health and education but remains one of the highest in the western hemisphere. The country’s best hope to alleviate poverty is in the growing oil and gas industry. Morales initially threatened to nationalise the industry but so far has just increased taxes. With high oil and gas prices, the government’s income from the industry has increased nine fold between 2002 and 2007.

Evo Morales is relying on his own high personal popularity to get his constitutional amendments through. In 2005 he was the first elected indigenous president in Bolivia’s history. His election prompted fears of a civil war between the Indian and the wealthy white population which did not eventuate. The opposition is backed by the Bush administration who have attacked Morales regime as “undemocratic” and a “champion of false populism”. Morales is unconcerned by attacks from Washington and plans to press ahead with his changes. “The constitution will be approved in a referendum by the people, which is the most democratic,” he said.

Morales mauls the media

Bolivian President Evo Morales showed the international media a clean pair of heels on Wednesday. The fit and avid football player and his team of former Bolivian world cup players recorded a 12-1 victory over a team of journalists from The Associated Press, Efe, Reuters and other foreign groups. Morales added to the damage by converting a penalty. While Morales won this time, he hasn't always had it his own way in his battles against Bolivia’s international press corps. "Some journalists treat me as if I'm ignorant, or crazy, and the press never reports this," Morales said. "Some foreign journalists come here just to offend me." Morales has often expressed his desire to open more government-friendly media outlets, and has announced plans to create numerous community radio stations in small towns throughout Bolivia.

Juan Evo Morales Ayma turns 47 on 26 October. Popularly known simply as Evo, he claims to be Bolivia’s first indigenous leader since before the Spanish Conquest 470 years ago. His political party Movimento Al Socialismo (known as MAS which is also Spanish for ‘more’) was founded in 1997 and has had a spectacular rise to power. It came from nowhere to come second in the 2002 elections with 19.4 % of the valid presidential vote and 14.6% of the valid uninominal vote, which gave it 27 out of 130 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and eight out of 27 seats in the Senate. Morales credited then U.S. ambassador Manuel Rocha for the success of MAS: "Every statement [Rocha] made against us helped us to grow and awaken the conscience of the people." None of the other candidates would agree to enter a debate with Morales and his “minor party”. Morales turned that into a positive by saying “"The one who I want to debate is Ambassador Rocha — I prefer to argue with the owner of the circus, not the clowns."

Rocha and the US State Department cautioned the other parties not to enter a coalition with MAS. Instead they became the strongest opposition party. In October 2003, Evo played a central role in the violent demonstrations demanding the nationalisation of the energy sector that led to the resignation of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. The cause was the Bolivian Gas War, a huge social conflict based on the exploitation of the country’s vast natural gas reserves. In the 1990s, the government had awarded generous contracts to 26 foreign companies in a consortium called Pacific LNG. The plan called for a pipeline to the Chilean coast where the gas would be exported to the US and elsewhere. Opponents argued that exporting the gas as a raw material would give Bolivia only 18% of the profits. When the army killed seven protesters against the plan in September 2003, the Bolivian Workers Confederation and the leader of the indigenous party declared an indefinite general strike. Morales and MAS eventually took part and organised the protests in the capital in 2005.

Morales was well prepared for the December 2005 election. He formed a ticket with Alvaro Garcia Linera whose elegance and middle class background formed a striking contrast with the Aymara Indian common look of Morales. The combination was a success. Morales won 54% of the vote and was declared outright winner without a congressional vote. The new president has been openly hostile to US and foreign interests.

In May this year he fulfilled on an election pledge and signed a decree nationalising the gas industry. He threatened to evict foreign companies unless they sign new contracts within six months giving Bolivia majority control over the entire production chain. The decree impacts about 20 foreign oil companies, including Spain's Repsol, Petrobras of Brazil, Britain's BP and French group Total.

Morales’ power base is Bolivia's cocalero movement – a loose federation of coca leaf-growing campesinos who are resisting the efforts of the US to eradicate coca in the province of Chapare in southeastern Bolivia. In front of an audience of 20,000 cocaleros shortly after his election win, Morales told them ,"the fight for coca symbolises our fight for freedom. Coca growers will continue to grow coca. There will never be zero coca." This was a reference to the US backed “Plan Dignidad” (Dignity Plan) which the 2000 Bolivian government supply-side exercised to rid the rid the country of illegal coca which is a key ingredient of cocaine. However the indigenous Aymara and Quechua peoples have traditionally chewed coca leaves as a dietary supplement. Its consumption in the form of leaves and tea is part of daily life for Bolivia's peasants, miners and workers. They saw Plan Dignidad as an attack on their way of life. Morales says he supports an anti-drug policy but not an anti-coca policy, "there will be zero cocaine, zero drug trafficking, but not zero coca".