Michelle Bachelet, about whose possible presidential candidacy I posted about for the first time more than two years ago, has been elected President of Chile. Now comes the hard part: governing.
As Marc Cooper notes here, despite the largely positive press that Chile gets, there is a lot of room for improvement, especially in labor law and the vaunted privatized pension system. Indeed, although the pension issue did come up as a significant issue in this election and have gotten a great deal of attention recently, warnings about Chile's pension system have been around for several years and concerns about privatization of Latin America's pensions in general have been voiced for at least the past couple of years.
As I mentioned in the post from a couple of years ago and as I posted on Cooper's blog, the issue of the military's finances remains of some concern:
A Pinochet-era constitution gave the armed forces four seats in the Senate that are not subject to election.
The president does not have the power to fire commanders in chief, and the same commanders are part of a security council that limits presidential power. The military budget, which includes a big subsidy from state-owned copper company Codelco, is off limits to Congress and the executive.
"A country cannot be left naked, without defense, because you can't just improvise defense when you need it. Today, since we are at peace, fortunately all the spending looks superfluous, but defense is about prevention," Bachelet said.
This year's military budget is 1.3 percent of gross domestic product, which is forecast at about $65 billion. Bachelet rejects criticisms that that is a bigger proportion than most of Chile's neighbors, saying that each country uses a different methodology to measure the military budget.
The subsidy from Codelco, the copper industry that Allende nationalized and Pinochet kept nationalized (kind of shatters that image as the great free marketer doesn't it?) earmarks 10% of Codelco's earnings for the military. Chile's current President, Ricardo Lagos (a socialist) wants to privatize Codelco. I do not claim to be an expert on Chile's security, however, I also do not think that their military needs to be as big as it is. I also happen to think that it should be under civilian control. This is one legacy of Pinochet's that needs to be changed, but with a senate including unelected senators stacked against such a change it doesn't seem likely.
The issue of the unelected senators has been resolved. One issue that has been persistently raise by the coalition that Bachelet's Socialist party is a part of is that the Pinochet-era constitution stifled their ability to effect reforms. Now that issue is resolved and they no longer have that as an excuse. Only time will tell if they can step up and make the changes.
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