The Concertación (C)—the Concert of Parties for Democracy—the broad electoral coalition of center-left parties that defeated the military regime in Chile in a plebiscite called in 1987 by strongman Augusto Pinochet to determine whether or not he should remain in power, is in serious trouble of losing La Moneda in the December 13th elections as a result of three undeniable reasons: 1) the unappealing candidacy of…
2009 Chilean General Election
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Rissig Licha
Rissig Licha has more than two decades of experience as a communications counselor in both the public and private sectors, especially in the areas of strat…
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Major Parties
- National Renewal: a right-wing conservative political party belonging to the Chilean right-wing political coalition Coalition for Change in conjunction with the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) and the Chile First movement (CH1). The party president is Carlos Larraín, and its principal leaders are Sebastián Piñera, the latest presidential candidate of the party, and Andrés Allamand.
- Christian Democratic Party of Chile: a political party in Chile and governs as part of the Coalition of Parties for Democracy coalition. The origins of the party go back to the 1930s, when the Conservative Party became split between traditionalist and social-Christian sectors.
- Party for Democracy: a governing political party in Chile; it is social democratic in its political orientation. The party nominated, as part of the Concertacion (Coalition of Parties for Democracy), in the 1999/2000 presidential elections Ricardo Lagos Escobar, the main leader of the party, who won 48.0 % in the first round and was elected with 51.3 % in the second round.
- Independent Democrat Union: a Chilean conservative political party. Its current president is Juan Antonio Coloma. UDI and National Renewal (RN) form a coalition of right-wing parties called Alianza por Chile (Alliance for Chile). It is currently the largest political party in Congress. The origin of this party was primarily brought about by the need to legitimate and create a political structure to similar to one instated by the administration of Augusto Pinochet.
- Socialist Party of Chile: part of the ruling Coalition of Parties for Democracy coalition. Its historical leader was the late President of Chile Salvador Allende Gossens, deposed by General Pinochet.
- Communist Party of Chile: a Chilean political party that advocates communism. It was founded in 1922, as the continuation of the Socialist Workers Party.
- Social Democratic Radical Party: a social democratic party in Chile. The party is a member of Socialist International. The party was founded in August 18, 1994, out of a union between the Radical Party (Chile) and the Social Democratic Party of Chile, both of which had received poor results in the parliamentary elections.
Goverment Structure
- The Constitution of Chile was approved in a highly irregular national plebiscite in September 1980, under the military government of Augusto Pinochet. It entered into force in March 1981. After Pinochet's defeat in the 1988 plebiscite, the constitution was amended to ease provisions for future amendments to the Constitution. In September 2005, President Ricardo Lagos signed into law several constitutional amendments passed by Congress. These include eliminating the positions of appointed senators and senators for life, granting the President authority to remove the commanders-in-chief of the armed forces, and reducing the presidential term from six to four years.
- The Congress of Chile has a 38-seat Senate and a 120-member Chamber of Deputies. Senators serve for 8 years with staggered terms, while deputies are elected every 4 years. The current Senate has a 20–18 split in favor of pro-government senators. The last congressional elections were held on December 11, 2005, concurrently with the presidential election. The current lower house—the Chamber of Deputies—contains 63 members of the governing center-left coalition and 57 from the center-right opposition.
- Chile's congressional elections are governed by a binomial system that rewards large representations. Therefore, there are only two senate and two deputy seats apportioned to each electoral district, parties are forced to form wide coalitions and, historically, the two largest coalitions (Concertación and Alianza) split most of the seats in a district. Only if the leading coalition ticket out-polls the second place coalition by a margin of more than 2-to-1 does the winning coalition gain both seats. In the 2001 congressional elections, the conservative Independent Democratic Union surpassed the Christian Democrats for the first time to become the largest party in the lower house. In the 2005 parliamentary election, both leading parties, the Christian Democrats and the UDI lost representation in favor of their respective allies Socialist Party (which became the biggest party in the Concertación block) and National Renewal in the right-wing alliance.
- Chile's judiciary is independent and includes a court of appeal, a system of military courts, a constitutional tribunal, and the Supreme Court of Chile. In June 2005, Chile completed a nation-wide overhaul of its criminal justice system. The reform has replaced inquisitorial proceedings with an adversarial system more similar to that of the United States.