Chilean President Signs Election Reform [View All]

[Peace Patriot]

Source: Prensa Latina

Chilean President Signs Election Reform

Santiago, Chile, Apr 5 (Prensa Latina) President Michelle Bachelet signed the reform of the exclusive "binominal" electoral system on Thursday, to favor election to Congress of forces of the people that have been so far excluded.

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The current electoral system was designed by Augusto Pinochet s dictatorship to artificially maintain a rightwing presence in Congress, excluding important sectors of Chilean progressives.

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(Batchelet) said "the best that could happen to democracy is that all the political sectors that represent the country are in the Legislature."

Read more: http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={1BB57400-7E0A-4E23-83DC-419EE44F8696})&language=EN

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Another step in the democratization of Latin America, which is proceeding apace, with leftist (majorityist) governments elected in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and big leftist movements in Peru, Paraguay, Guatemala and Mexico (likely to win future elections).

In Ecuador, the new, young "dragonslayer" president--US-educated leftist economist Rafael Correa--is engaged in a knockdown dragout with the highly corrupt legislature (bastion of the rich elites, the fascists and corporatists) over the powers of the people's assembly which is re-writing the constitution. AP's "talking point" is that Ecuador is a "politically unstable nation," but what is really happening is an orderly, lawful, peaceful, democratic challenge to wrongful rule.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2795198

In Venezuela, the issue was also the constitution. And what is remarkable is that everyone had read it! (See "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised".) The people wrote it. The people voted on it. And that was what was on everybody's lips--"what about our constitution?!"--during the violent military coup attempt in 2002. (The people won!)

The structure of entrenched rightwing power is also the issue in Bolivia, where the big landowners, fascists and corporatists control the law, the courts and the legislature, and are trying to split off the provinces that contain the oil and other rich resources, from the federal government, so that those resources benefit the few and not the many. The federal government is now headed by the first indigenous president of Bolivia, Evo Morales--a union organizer and grass roots activist--whose awesome peoples' movement threw Bechtel Corp. out of Bolivia, after Bechtel privatized the water in one Bolivian city and then jacked up the price to the poorest of the poor, even trying to charge poor peasants for collecting rainwater! The rich elites make these kinds of deals with foreign corporations--to the great detriment of the majority of people--then try to defend them with political and legal structures that exclude everyone else's interests.

In Argentina, the economy was destroyed, and the social fabric of the country was nearly torn asunder, by onerous World Bank loans--incurred by the rich, who then steal off the top and leave the poor to pay the debt, with draconian repayment terms that include drastically cutting all social programs, and opening the country to corporate predation. (The same thing is happening to our country right now--with this enormous deficit the Bushites have incurred--watch out!) Remarkably, the poor and middle class joined forces, and went round with tiny hammers breaking every bank ATM display window in Buenos Aires, in protest. Three governments later--in quick succession--they finally got a leftist government (that of Nestor Kirchner) that promised to get Argentina out from under World Bank debt and never get into it again. With Venezuela's help (which created the new Bank of the South), Argentina is now well on its way to recovery.

In Chile, the election of Chile's first woman president, socialist Michele Batchelet--who had been tortured by the US-backed dictator Pinochet, and lost family members to that dreadful regime--is another signal of this enormous sea change in South American politics. Although she did not achieve proportional representation in the legislature (which is what she sought), the additional seats to create broader representation is a significant reform.

Latin Americans are engaged in a very thorough, and profound, restructuring of power, from the bottom up. Another word for it is democracy. It seems like I've heard of that somewhere.

Viva la revolución!