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Patricio Aylwin Azócar

On March 11, 1990, General Pinochet handed the presidency of Chile to Patricio Aylwin. When Aylwin's Coalition of Parties for Democracy (Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia--CPD) government took over, Chile had the best performing economy in Latin America. Ironically, although the CPD strongly criticized the disproportionate powers given to the president in the 1980 constitution, President Aylwin moved with determination to make full use of those very powers.

The son of a middle-class family, whose father was a lawyer and judge and eventually president of the Supreme Court, Aylwin was born on November 26, 1918, in Viña del Mar. He studied law and had faculty appointments at the University of Chile and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. In 1945 he joined the National Falange (Falange Nacional), the precursor of the PDC, which he helped form in 1957. A former senator, Aylwin served seven terms as president of the PDC, a position he held when he was nominated as the PDC's presidential candidate. In his work as spokesman for the multiparty opposition coalition, he displayed great skills as a conciliator, gaining the confidence of parties and leaders on the left, who had vehemently opposed his support for the overthrow of the Allende government. A man of deep religious conviction, humble demeanor, and unimpeachable honesty, Aylwin impressed friends and foes alike when he successfully negotiated the constitutional reforms of 1989.

As president, Aylwin surprised even his closest advisers with his firm leadership, particularly his willingness to stand up to Pinochet, who remained army commander. For instance, in a crucial meeting of Cosena, Aylwin challenged Pinochet on a matter directly related to the issue of presidential authority and received backing from the other military commanders for his position. Aylwin moved cautiously but firmly in dealing with the human rights abuses of the past, appointing a commission that officially acknowledged the crimes of the security forces. Subsequent legislation provided compensation for victims or their families, even if prosecution for most of those crimes appeared unlikely ever to take place.

The Aylwin government also took great pains to assure domestic and foreign investors of its intention to maintain the basic features of the free-market economic model. The CPD was keenly aware that it needed to retain the confidence of the national and international business communities and show the world that it too could manage economic policy with skill and responsibility. Indeed, by showing that Chile could manage its economic affairs in democracy, the government could provide an even more favorable economic climate, one not clouded by the political confrontations and potential instability of authoritarianism. The Aylwin government appeared to meet this objective, as the Chilean economy grew at an average rate of more than 6 percent from 1990 through 1993.

The Aylwin government was cautious in proposing constitutional reforms for fear of alienating the military and the opposition parties of the right, which controlled the Senate. The key constitutional reform, enacted on November 9, 1991, created democratically elected local governments by reestablishing elections for municipal mayors and council members. Additional reforms of the judicial system were also approved. Although it indicated its desire to change the electoral system and the nature of civil-military relations, the Aylwin government was unable to achieve those objectives.

After the boinazo of May 1993, the international press often referred to the Aylwin administration as a co-government, in which the military and civilians shared power equally. According to this view, Chile's democracy was emasculated, with a president unable to resist the military and with a Congress acting as a rubber-stamp body. This view seemed to be supported by the fact that President Aylwin lacked the power to appoint, promote, and dismiss officers. The president cannot appoint or fire the commanders in chief of each service. Furthermore, military officers seem to be immune to prosecution for human rights abuses. In fact, the notion of "co-government" is simplistic and fails to explain some of the limited yet significant developments under the Aylwin government. In 1993 Genaro Arriagada, a leader within the Christian Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata Cristiano--PDC), referred to a civil-military opposition to Aylwin's policies.

This suggests that the confrontation was not merely one between the military and civilians. Whereas the ruling center-left coalition known as the Coalition of Parties for Democracy (Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia--CPD) held an advantage in the Chamber of Deputies (seventy to forty-nine), the military was protected by a majority in the Senate, thanks to the electoral engineering of the Pinochet regime that provided for nine designated senators. Without the designated senators, the CPD would have had a majority in the Senate (twenty-two to sixteen) from 1989 until March 1994. The designated senators, appointed by Pinochet, gave the right-wing opposition a three-seat advantage in the Senate (after 1991, only a two-seat advantage, with the death of a designated senator).

The Aylwin administration was willing to raise issues in civilmilitary relations even when it was clear that it would not win. In mid-1992 the Aylwin government proposed a series of constitutional reforms that would have limited the prerogatives of the military by allowing the president to appoint, promote, and remove officers. In addition, the president would have the power to appoint and remove the commanders in chief of the armed forces, although this would not apply to the current commanders. The reforms were opposed by the National Renewal (Renovación Nacional) and the Independent Democratic Union (Unión Demócrata Independiente--UDI), which suffered electoral setbacks in the June 23, 1992, municipal elections and were afraid of further losses. The army also opposed the reforms in a leaked paper published by La Tercera de la Hora, a leading daily. In the prosecution of military officers for human rights abuses, an unusual coalition between the right and left derailed an initiative by the Aylwin government to complete the process.

Unable to successfully carry out major constitutional reforms in relation to the military, the Aylwin administration exercised its power in other ways. The Chilean president can veto the promotions of military officers, and in late 1993 Aylwin adroitly used the threat of the veto to influence the matter of when Pinochet would step down as army commander in chief.

For years, opponents of the Pinochet government had argued that its economic program was based on ideas alien to the Chilean tradition. In early 1990, analysts, scholars, stockbrokers, and politicians throughout the world wondered if the new democratic government of President Aylwin would maintain some, or for that matter any, of the most important aspects of the military government's market-oriented policies, or if the CPD government would reform the system along the lines of the decade-long criticisms of the opposition. What made this question particularly interesting was that at the time of the restoration of democracy, Chile was considered by many, including international institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, as a premier example of the way the adjustment process after the debt crisis should be carried out. A number of analysts asked themselves how the advent of democracy would affect Chile's economic policy. In particular, analysts were concerned about the new government's attitude toward the free price system and Chile's new openness to international competition.

Regarding price competition, the Aylwin program's position was stated as follows: "We affirm that within an efficient economic policy there is no role for price controls." In discussing the role of the market, the program noted: "The market cannot be replaced as a mechanism for consumers to articulate their preferences." These views were a far cry from those sustained by Frei's Christian Democratic government of the 1960s and, especially, from those of Allende's UP government of 1970-73. They were also substantially different from those of the new market critics of the 1970s and mid-1980s. Indeed, the CPD program conveyed that there had been a significant convergence of domestic views on the role of markets in the economic process.

Addressing the opening of the economy to the rest of the world, the CPD program stated: "The most important instruments of the external sector policy are the maintenance of a stable high real exchange rate and a reasonably low import tariff" [emphasis added]. This statement suggests that from its onset the Aylwin government was not prepared to implement major changes to one of the most fundamental features of Chile's new economics.

By the end of its first year in office, the Aylwin government increased social spending by more than US$1.5 billion over the Pinochet government's budget. The revenue came from a 4 percent increase in the higher tax rate on enterprises, from 11 percent to 15 percent; a 2 percent hike in the national value-added tax ( VAT) to 18 percent; and other sources. The objective of the Aylwin government was to enhance the purchasing power of minimum pensions, to increase the quality of educational and health services and to provide greater assistance in the housing field. The new programs were intended to have a positive effect on the distribution of income.

The military government's reforms had privatized or decentralized the administration of many welfare and social-assistance institutions. The Aylwin government did not reverse these privatizations, although it attempted to increase the quality and funding of the institutions that remained in the public sector. It also decided not to recentralize the administration of the public portions of welfare, educational, and social-assistance institutions that had been placed in the hands of local or regional governments. The Aylwin administration was committed to strengthening local and regional governments as part of a broad effort to enhance the decentralization of authority. However, in contrast to the military regime's decentralization projects that organized local and regional governments along lines of authoritarianism and corporatism, new constitutional and legal reforms adopted in 1992 introduced democracy to these levels of government.