Bachelet reiterates campaign pledge of tax, education reforms
SANTIAGO: Center-leftist Michelle Bachelet promised major tax and education reforms to help ease Chile’s social divisions after sweeping back to power with a huge majority in presidential elections on Sunday.
Bachelet won with about 62 per cent support, the highest share of votes for any presidential candidate since the country returned to holding democratic elections in 1989.
The landslide victory against Evelyn Matthei, the conservative candidate of the Alianza coalition, puts Bachelet back in the Moneda presidential palace after a four-year gap and gives her a mandate to push for an education overhaul and the fiscal reforms to help pay for it.
“Chile has looked at itself, has looked at its path, its recent history, its wounds, its feats, its unfinished business and this Chile has decided it is the time to start deep transformations,” Bachelet told a jubilant crowd of supporters yesterday night as confetti rained down.
“There is no question about it: profits can’t be the motor behind education because education isn’t merchandise and because dreams aren’t a consumer good.”
Good quality schooling is generally only available in Chile to those who can pay, and massive student protests demanding change – which sometimes turned violent – hurt the popularity of outgoing conservative president Sebastian Pinera.
Bachelet ran on a platform of social policies to address a deep divide between rich and poor, and plans to hike the corporate tax rate.
Chile, the world’s top copper-exporting nation, is ranked the most unequal country in the 34-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
“She will govern a country with profound demands for change,” Senator Ricardo Lagos Weber of Bachelet’s New Majority coalition told Reuters. “The country isn’t flat on its back, it is healthy, organized, growing economically, creating jobs and improving salaries. But it is also deeply unequal.”
Plans to change a constitution and electoral system that date back to general Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship -which ended in 1990 – are also among Bachelet’s campaign pledges.
“Bachelet has promised a lot and expectations are high, while the (economic) situation isn’t as favorable as it was in recent years,” said Patricio Navia, a political scientist and professor at New York University.
If she does need to water down her promises because slower growth makes increased public spending tricky – or if opposition becomes obstructionist in a congress that remains divided after parliamentary elections last month – she could herself face popular protests.
Shortly after her victory yesterday, hackers posted a message on the education ministry’s Web site saying “Mrs. President we will take it upon ourselves to make things difficult for you. Next year will be a time of protests.”
After expanding 5.6 per cent last year, Chile’s economy is seen ending 2013 with 4.2 per cent growth and hitting between 3.75 per cent and 4.75 per cent next year.
One of Bachelet’s main economic policies looks to reduce the effective fiscal deficit from roughly 1 per cent of gross domestic product to zero by 2018, but a slowdown could make that target tough to hit. (Reuters)