The constitutional and electoral reform in Chile is a negative example of an electoral system designed by a Government with the object of ensuring control over the essential elements of political power and to benefit the forces that support it on the basis of an accurate analysis of the electoral situation of the country. To these intents and purposes were used:
- arbitrary practices (gerrymandering) in the setting up of the constituencies;
- the introduction of a binominal system of districts in which a proportional system is applied;
- the inclusion of a relevant number of senators designated;
- a majority threshold required in order to reform the Constitution, which makes any modification in practice impossible.
The aim of all this was to guarantee the government parties a higher quota of representation and power than a more neutral electoral system would have provided them with. It must not be forgotten that this was a military dictatorship, which had emerged from a bloody coup-d'Ètat, maintained in power for sixteen years due to the support of the army and responsible for the suppression of democratic rights and freedom.
The present electoral system in Chile was designed in the last years of the Pinochet regime and put into operation in the months following the plebiscite of October 1988, whose result - 50% 'no' and 44% 'yes' - prevented Pinochet from prolonging his presidency for a further eight years (over and above the sixteen years that he already had been in power).
During the Pinochet regime the previous administrative division of the country had been altered. The new structure divided the country into thirteen regions, each of them with various provinces, the number of which rose to fifty. The municipalities, previously the smallest administrative units, were maintained, without their numbers undergoing noticeable changes, but the districts were done away with.
The fact that Pinochet lost his plebiscite forced a presidential election to be held the following year (December 1989) and the two parliamentary houses had to be elected simultaneously. Shortly after the plebiscite, the Government took great pains to draw up a law to define a new electoral system that would already be in force for the said elections. Thus the number of deputies for the Lower House was reduced to a hundred and twenty, elected in sixty binominal districts with a proportional system.
The Senate once again consisted of forty-five members, of which Pinochet had appointed eight for a period of eight years. A further thirty-six of them were elected in binominal districts, also according to a proportional system.
The sixty constituencies for the Lower House were set up in such a way that, should the results of the 1988 plebiscite be extrapolated, then in none of the new electoral districts, 'no' would have received more than double the votes of 'yes'. The reason was the provision in a binominal constituency elected proportionally, that of those who had voted 'no' in the plebiscite, would have done so for the centre-leftwing coalition, whilst those who voted 'yes' would do so in support of the rightwing candidates. To achieve this, the constituencies did not keep to the provincial boundaries, but they did to the regional boundaries. Thus the region with the lowest population, AyÈn, with only sixty thousand inhabitants, had to elect two deputies and two senators. The metropolitan area of Santiago, with five thousand inhabitants, elected four senators and thirty-two deputies.
The boundaries of some of the constituencies were uncertain up to the last minute. Finally, the electoral map was very similar in appearance to the typical product of a politically motivated technique of setting boundaries (gerrymandering). On principle, no municipality was divided, with the result that municipalities with less than three hundred thousand inhabitants made up one sole electoral district, whilst in certain rural areas the average population per district reached around one hundred and fifty thousand, thus leading to an over-representation of these districts in the final composition of the Parliament.
THE BINOMINAL DISTRICTS IN CHILE
The 'binominal' system produces some opposite effects to the majority uninominal system, in which the candidate most voted for obtains the only seat. The latter exaggerates the power of the majority party at the cost of the minority parties. In the 'binominal' system, on the contrary, should the biggest of the minority parties receive at least 33,4% of the votes in each constituency, it is guaranteed half the number of seats. In Chile, Pinochet's strategists accurately anticipated that the rightist parties would obtain second position in the presidential and legislative elections, after the centre-leftwing coalition made up of the parties that backed 'no' in the plebiscite. By designing the districts in a way that in no case the 'no' votes would have tripled the 'yes' votes, it was ensured that the electoral status quo brought about good electoral results for them. The matter was crucial, because to modify Pinochet's 1980 Constitution, a majority of two-thirds of the deputies is required. Rulings such as the fact that the President cannot cease the commanders-in-chief of the Armed Forces, form the axis to maintain control that the said forces and the rightwing parties exert on Chilean politics. A parliamentary minority would have been a disaster for all of them, but the scenario ended up being established to their advantage thanks to the two pillars pointed out: the senators having been appointed by the President assured the majority in the Senate and the electoral system having been designed the way it was, it would have been highly improbable that the centre-leftwing coalition would have reached more than two-thirds of the members of the House of Representatives.
Parliamentary elections
Finally, the centre-leftwing coalition ('Consensus') managed to obtain 72 of the 120 deputies, whilst the rightwing parties in favour of Pinochet obtained the other 48. The Consensus succeeded in obtaining more than double the votes of the conservatives in twelve districts, in which the latter were prejudiced by the dispersion of one part of the votes, that ended up for the populist candidates orientated towards the right. On the other hand, the communists decided to maintain their own candidates - in some cases allied with the individual candidates of the Socialist Party, which nevertheless formed part of the Consensus, depriving the coalition of perhaps a further eight or ten more deputies.
In the Senate, the Consensus gained twenty-two seats and the conservatives sixteen, but the senators designated ensured a sufficient majority to the latter. In addition, what happens is that although the House of Representatives is renewed each four years, just like half of the Senate, the mandate of the senators designated lasts for at least eight years.
Presidential elections
The most important change produced by the new electoral law has perhaps been the establishment of two rounds, like in the French Presidential elections. This change has majority support, because of the election, according to the old system, that led Salvador Allende to the presidency. Allende won in 1970 with 36% of the votes and the Parliament had to decide between him and Alessandri, who almost tied with him. The Commander-in-Chief of the army was assassinated when he adhered to the Constitution regarding the army's role in this decision.
In 1989 the winner was Patricio Aylwin, a Christian Democrat backed by the centre-leftwing coalition Consensus, who won 55% of the votes. Hern·n B¸chi, who had been the Minister of Finance with Pinochet, obtained 29% and a third candidate, a millionaire that stood as an independent, 16%.
Source: the material of this national case is an extract of a more extensive analysis on the Chilean electoral system since 1973, published anonymously on the web page of the University of Keele [http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/election.htm]. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to identify the author in order to be able to give him credit for such a thorough analysis.
