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Joaquín Lavín lost Chile's presidential election in its second round on Dec. 26 but ended up not too far behind his rival, Ricardo Lagos. After having virtually tied with Lagos in the first voting round early in December, Lavín — who delivereded the best electoral performance in at least 60 years by a right-wing presidential candidate — won in the second round almost 49 percent of the vote, against somewhat more than 51 percent for Socialist Lagos.
Lagos was the candidate of the "Concertación", the alliance of the Christian Democratic Party and the Socialist Party, that carried to an easy victory its two previous presidential candidates. The conventional wisdom was it would be able to repeat this performance this time around. But two factors made this sure thing much less so as the campaign advanced.
One was that, while the two who made it before to the La Moneda palace, Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei, came from the Christian Democrat side of the alliance, this time its candidate, Lagos, came from the Socialist side. In 1970, Allende became the first president elected on a Marxist-Leninist program in a non-Communist country of the Western Hemisphere, and by implementing it he threw the country into economic and social chaos in less than three years. When skyrocketing prices, food shortages, strikes and political violence brought Chile to the brink of a total collapse, it was saved by the military coup in 1973 which eventually restored democracy and set the economy on the path to the stability it enjoys toda
Since then, Chileans have been wary of a possible socialist president. Nevertheless, there appeared to be no other candidate who could put up a fight against Lagos, who is not at all the Marxist-Leninist Allende was and has enjoyed political prominence as a politician with a long career, which includes having been a member of current president Eduardo Frei's cabinet.
On the other hand, Lavín, a Chicago-educated economist and former business editor of the leading daily El Mercurio, was practically unknown outside Santiago until last year, when he launched his presidential campaign and embarked on a series of three trips up and down the country, during which he traversed more than 25,000 miles.
Eventually, Lavín emerged as a fresh face in the political spectrum as a right-wing presidential candidate with a populist appeal and a solid track record as mayor of the Los Condes district in Santiago. He took the right to new horizons, pledging he would form a bank for the poor, create a million jobs, sell the presidential plane and raise some pensions, acquiring the image of a man of the people, while his Socialist opponent was conducting a lackluster campaign in which he was increasingly perceived as formal and distant.
The significance of the election result is twofold. It showed that a socialist, Lagos, albeit a moderate socialist, could be elected president, wiping away the bitter memories of Allende. And it also showed that a rightist, Lavín, even one who was a one-time adviser to the 1973 coup leader, dictator and eventually president Augusto Pinochet, can compete successfully for votes when he has an appealing personality and runs a populist campaign that raises issues that really touch people.
This twofold significance in turn points out to a third one: through a meaningful race between the right and the left, Chile's democracy has come of age, leaving behind both Allende and Pinochet.
"Lavín is a big winner. He got much more support than expected," said Ricardo Israel, director for the Political Science Institute at the University of Chile. And referring to the 44 percent that Pinochet got at the height of his popularity in 1988, he added: "He got more than the right of yesteryear. He's the leader of the opposition."
During the campaign, Lavín managed to shape the notion that the socialist candidate was a man of old and tired ideas but, in a certain sense, he also helped Lagos by pressing him to tone down ideological debate and focus on the deep socio-economic sectorial problems that underlie the successful development of Chile's overall economy. Eventually, Lagos was forced to match Lavin's proposals about the country's economy with which he planned to nurture the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs. As president he will have to meet those promises when he takes office March 11, replacing centrist Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei as he ends his six-years in power.
The outcome of the presidential election is also a sign that resolving social and economic issues — such as how to remedy uneven income distribution — now matter more to most Chileans than discussing Pinochet, who was so much in the news throughout the campaign as his fate was being decided in London.
"People no longer vote on parties and ideology," Lavín told Lagos in a television debate. "They vote for the candidate they believe will solve their daily problems."
Now the responsibility for satisfying this desire is Lagos's. Both Lavín and Lagos made unemployment, which hit 11 per cent last year, central to their campaigns, with Lagos promising to establish unemployment insurance for those without jobs, a plan that had substantial support among business people.
However, a little over a week after the election, Lagos indicated his first priority is reviving a controversial leftist-oriented labor reform program. when that once in office on March 11. He has announced that once in power he will push through Congress reforms giving semi-skilled or unskilled workers at small businesses the right to negotiate pay and conditions collectively with workers at bigger plants.
This left-sponsored plan which Lagos has placed at the top of his legislative agenda is opposed by business people who, with the support of leading economists, argue that it would put small businesses at a competitive disadvantage if they had to pay the higher salaries that larger operations can afford to pay — and that eventually this would cause many sources of work to close and would increase unemployment.
After the election the question remained whether Ricardo Lagos would govern pragmatically or would revert to the kind of ideological policies that have proved inefficient elsewhere in the world. He has provided an answer of sorts by departing so early from the more centrist position he took when he needed votes to win the election, thus giving Joaquín Lavín the opportunity to enhance his role as the new leader of a renovated right opposition.
Claudio Campuzano is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com