Left Behind

What ought to come as a surprise–an unpleasant one–is the reaction of the president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet. Chile’s left of center governing coalition, the “Concertación,” is often referred to as the alternative to the “toxic” or “predatory” left epitomized by the likes of the Castro brothers, Chávez, Correa, and Bolivia’s Evo Morales. Indeed, last January Chilean Socialist (and president of the Organization of American States) José Miguel Insulza had the temerity to criticize Chávez’s silencing of an opposition TV station–an act of principle that earned Insulza a fistful of obscene epithets from the petulant Chávez. How curious, therefore, that President Bachelet’s initial reaction to the strike against FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) was angrily to denounce Colombia’s actions as unacceptable. Where, one might ask, was the voice of Latin America’s “other left”?

Bachelet’s intemperate reaction to Colombia’s act of self defense is but the latest in a series of public statements and public policies that highlight the unwillingness of Chile’s left actually to be Latin America’s reasonable left of center alternative to the carnivores in Caracas and the homicidal ideologues in Havana. From a penchant for state-centered solutions, to a hostility towards law enforcement, to a disposition to impose abortion on a predominantly Catholic country, Chile’s Concertación has proved remarkably hostile to personal and economic freedom.

Every Chilean president since March 1990 has been a part of the Concertación. During the period per capita incomes have approximately doubled, thanks to low tariffs and taxes, relatively little risk of sudden expropriation, and relatively little corruption. Yet the Concertación systematically denounces the very policies responsible for that prosperity. As it left power in 1990, Chile’s military government imposed a constitution loaded with checks and balances, mostly checks. These made it hard to change status quo policies, which tended to be friendly towards markets. To make an 18-year-long story short, the Concertación has finally managed to place its own people in the supreme court, the constitutional court, the comptroller general’s office, the national security council, the Senate, and so forth. They are now in a position to implement their shared program of “reform.”

So what is the agenda towards which they have been working so tirelessly for so many years? In brief: statism, weakened law enforcement, and corruption.

First, let’s consider a few of the Concertación’s statist policies. The minister of health recently issued a regulation requiring all pharmacies to provide “morning-after pills” on demand, conscientious objection on the part of the pharmacist notwithstanding. When several major pharmacy chains took exception, they were threatened with massive fines until they buckled. The only whisper of complaint inside the Concertación came from a few members of the Christian Democratic party, whose manifesto clearly supports life and unequivocally opposes abortion. However, confronted with the morning-after pill controversy, the Christian Democrats’ congressional delegation were mostly docile, save for caviling by the speaker of the lower chamber of Congress.

Then there is the burden of paperwork, which appears to be worsening. Businesses must endure the steady, hostile vigilance of government officials who seem to think of entrepreneurs as “bloodsuckers,” to use the term of Socialist senator and presidential confidant Camilo Escalona. The government’s education policy has also been hostile to market solutions. For example, an education reform bill contained a provision banning “for-profit” private schools. Was this based on evidence that the profit motive destroys academic achievement? No. Instead the government simply voiced its atavistic opposition to markets. When the opposition dug in its heels, and even some members of the government coalition balked, the provision was modified to allow for-profit schools–provided all the profits are reinvested in education!

Perhaps the epitome of the Concertación’s love for the state is their disastrous reform of the public transportation system in Santiago. Until about a year ago Santiago was criss-crossed by medium sized yellow buses popularly referred to as micros. Driven with the aggressiveness one usually associates with the (much smaller) taxicabs of New York, and spewing exhaust through catalytic converters in very questionable condition, the micros nevertheless provided cheap reliable transportation to virtually every part of Santiago. Most of the buses belonged to their drivers, or to very small enterprises (drivers would use their small savings to buy additional buses). Perhaps because of a difficult work stoppage by the drivers a few years ago, the government designed an antipollution “reform” that replaced the micros with far fewer large buses.

The seemingly chaotic microbus routes that reflected consumer demand were replaced by fewer routes that reflected the desires of central planners. The micros were banished from Santiago in February 2007, and disaster ensued. Journeys that had taken 45 minutes turned into halfday ordeals; many buses failed to run on their arbitrary schedules; massive numbers of employees arrived hours late for work. A year later the same employees have “adapted”: They now leave home hours earlier, or drive to work, more than replacing the traffic congestion that had been previously caused by the micros. The government’s response? It blamed–the marketplace! Bits of the poorly planned new system had been subcontracted to private bus companies, some of which delivered buses late, or failed to run their routes.

Gradually public outcry has forced the government to buy additional buses and to extend existing routes. All of this has been very expensive. The new system has needed repeated budgetary infusions, now running on the order of $150 million every six months. When several legislators balked at the repeated demands for cash to pay for “improvements” in a system that used to get people to work on time while running a profit, they were threatened with expulsion from their parties. Bachelet has assumed “political responsibility” for the fracaso, meaning that few of the planners have been fired. The list of statist policies is lengthening, and the international business community has taken note. Chile’s ratings on various measures of economic competitiveness have been steadily declining.

The second trait that seems to characterize the Concertación has been a general reluctance to side with law enforcers who are confronting increasingly well-armed urban terrorists. Last September, on the anniversary of the 1973 coup that brought down the government of Socialist president Salvador Allende, gangs of armed thugs roamed various neighborhoods of Santiago. One group wielding Molotov cocktails attacked a Catholic school that served a poor neighborhood. When the police showed up (carrying nightsticks and plastic shields), several of the villains broke out their guns and began shooting, killing one of the police, who by order of President Bachelet are not permitted to carry guns with live ammunition.

Shortly thereafter a group calling themselves “Lautaristas” were surprised by the police during a daytime robbery of a bank in the center of Santiago. The result: one policeman shot dead by the robbers as they fled the scene. The suspected shooter in the bank murder had been recently released from jail by a congressional amnesty for terrorists on the left. The government has sought to play down the connection of these and many other similar crimes with a resurgence of terrorist groups. The story goes on–police who act in self-defense are likely to face suspension. For example, on the same September day the policeman was shot defending the school, Socialist senator Alejandro Navarro joined street demonstrators and attacked a policeman, who had the audacity to hit back. The policeman has been suspended. Navarro continues to hold his seat in the Senate, where he openly receives campaign money from Hugo Chávez.

The third strand of policy being implemented by the Concertación has been characterized by left of center Senator Jorge Schaulsohn as a “culture of corruption.” Schaulsohn was expelled from the socialist Party for Democracy for having made the remark, but it appears to be an accurate one. A description of the crescendo of scandals that have characterized the Concertación could fill a book. From shoddy public works projects (one recently built bridge collapsed almost before it was finished) to state funds sequestered to pay political campaign workers, to secret “salary supplements” paid to cabinet ministers with state funds, to fraud in school subsidies so massive that even the Concertación’s own comptroller general had to object–massive corruption has become increasingly common in the Concertación’s Chile.

Far from being the alternative left, the Concertación seems to be overwhelmed by nostalgia for the failed statist policies that have proved so disastrous on so many occasions in the past. Rather than showing the rest of Latin America the way towards the sunlit uplands of prosperity, the Chilean left seems determined to figure prominently in future editions of Mendoza et al’s classic 2000 book, The Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot.

John Londregan, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton, is the author of Legislative Institutions and Ideology in Chile.