Politics and Public TV in Chile
SHAPIRO, Arthur M.
CRACKS IN THE COALITION Politics and Public TV in Chile BY ARTHUR M. SHAPIRO SANTIAGO ONE OF THE BUZZWORDS in post-Pinochet Chilean politics is transparencia—the condition of being open and...
...TVN has long been criticized for its alleged Leftist bias in programming...
...demanded opponents of the ouster...
...He had always staunchly opposed Navarrete's permitting shows on the offending subjects...
...Frei's Ministerof Public Works, RicardoLagos, considered the farthest to the Left in the Cabinet and a friend of TVN, seconded Aylwin's appeal...
...On November 28 Patricio Aylwin made a major speech appealing in the name of social justice for the coalition to be put back in order...
...embarrassed, exercised his "right as a citizen" to express his displeasure toTVN...
...It has been accused of favoring the smaller Left-of-center parties in the Concerlaci-6n over the DC, and the more leftist elements within the DC over the President's own centrist faction...
...In any event, given the Board's present makeup, the conclusion that the DC brought down Navarrete is virtually inescapable...
...What recently happened to Jorge Navarrete, however, was anything but "transparent": He is universally credited with saving Chile's national public television station, TVN, from both financial and moral bankruptcy, yet last November 10 he was summarily dismissed as its executive director by the Board of Directors without any explanation...
...Which social sectors— the Right...
...Debates quickly erupted in the media over the propriety of such broadcasts...
...Medina realized what was afoot...
...The Concerlacion has been gravely wounded...
...One member of the Board of Directors, psychiatrist Ramon Florenzano, is reputedly "close" to Opus Dei, the international Right-Wing Catholic lay organization...
...As a result, the terms of the Concerlacion and the structure of power within the DC are both open for renegotiation...
...apparently the DC acquiesced only after realizing that they could not foist their choice on the Board...
...Hurtado promised continuity and independence...
...Indeed, part of Navarrete's success was due to investigative and in-depth reporting by the news staff, and some people think that is what cost him his job...
...His news director, Bernardo de la Maza (who declared he would not renew his contract immediately after Navarrete's dismissal), is probably the most trusted figure in Chilean broadcast journalism...
...Although corruption of this sort is routine in much of Latin America, Campos was so outraged that he went to TVN and offered it the chance to videotape the actual payoff...
...He was proposed by the PS, PPD and UDI...
...He observed that there were "cracks" in the coalition and warned his colleagues, "One doesn't change coalitions like one changes clothes...
...someone closely tied to former President Patricio Aylwin...
...He consulted constantly both within the DC and the coalition...
...One prominent newsmagazine declared that Frei had hand-picked Ortiz Quiroga with "a clear mission: to get rid of Navarrete as quickly as possible, as soon as circumstances allowed...
...Increasingly unified and confident, it is already grooming RN leader Andres Allamand as its leading presidenciable for 1999...
...At the end of November speculation about a new TVN executive director ended when the Board of Directors selected political independent Carlos Hurtado, a former teacher of Navarrete's at the University of Chile...
...The AyKvinistas and the DCs coalition partners have therefore increasingly felt left out of the decision-making process, causing tensions to rise...
...Ranged against them were the three representatives of the Right: Catholic independent Florenzano, Luis Cordero of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), and Gonzalo Eguiguren of the major opposition group, the National Renovation Party (RN...
...The move raised a few eyebrows, because Ortiz Quiroga had recently represented a client in a suit against TVN...
...TVN is legally autonomous...
...It did, and the tape ran on the high-intensity TV newsmagazine 24 Horns...
...He exacerbated the situation soon after the firing by issuing a near-incomprehensible statement full of references to "entering a new phase" and "the need for an executive director who could better interact with the various social sectors...
...The Right, for its part, is delighted...
...Or is it...
...The crisis was over...
...In theory, then, he should have been in good shape politically, except reality in this case was very different from theory...
...He also attracted top-notch people whose personal integrity restored the respect of viewers turned cynical after 17 years of propaganda and pap...
...preted in some quarters as confirmation that the "Medina incident" lay behind the shakeup...
...Navarrete and Politzer could not have been sent packing without DC votes...
...A few days before Frei was to leave for the Asian Pacific Economic Summit in Indonesia, TVN chose to air an expose of government corruption in that country...
...The Board sacked Navarrete the same day the President flew to the Far East...
...The Indonesian Ambassador lodged an official protest...
...Those who think the reason for the executive director's ouster is rooted in Chile's politics appear to be closer to the mark...
...It has been noted, for example, that conservative religious circles were after Navarrete's head for quite a while...
...In the past, the four coalition representatives had constituted the majority that supported Navarrete and his policies...
...Brilliant" is a word that crops up again and again in discussions of Navarrete's performance...
...They flared into the open last September when Frei made unexpected changes in his Cabinet...
...Distinguished professors of law wrote ponderous articles for the newspapers on whether or not the publicity made it impossible for the accused to receive a fair trial...
...Viewers got to see her break into tears and beg, "Please, don't do this to me...
...Unlike its American counterpart, Chilean public TV gets no government money and is responsible for 100 per cent of its fund-raising...
...If true, this was the plan well before the controversial Indonesia program...
...the government cannot hire or fire its employees...
...The political Right, remarkably, discovered a passion for protecting criminal defendants...
...Navarrete himself is seen as an "Aylwinista...
...Frei...
...PPD leader Jorge Schaulsohn, PS leader Camilo Escalona and various DC Aylwinistas at once denounced the "Rightist putsch...
...Not so Frei: he has quickly earned a reputation as a "strong President" who confers only with his inner circle and often makes decisions that surprise everyone else...
...In the eyes of many Chileans, she was thereby transformed from a predatory crook to a sobbing victim of an over-zealous press...
...On December 2 Bernardo de la Maza met with Hurtado and then announced that he would stay on as news director...
...Still, why would a majority of the Board suddenly agree with him...
...Navarrete succeeded in tripling the budget during the past four years...
...Two other Board members belong to the parties on the Left that are part of the DCs Concerlacion: Juan Enrique Vega of the Socialist Party (PS) and Maria Eugenia Weinstein of the Party for Democracy (PPD...
...Davis, who writes frequently on Latin America...
...The dust had barely settled when the TVN crisis erupted—a crisis that could be interpreted as a power struggle between Aylwinistas and Frei-istas within the DC...
...A functionary handling his case, one Ana Luisa Medina, offered to "regularize" the matter for a payoff substantially less than the 3-million-peso ($7,500) fine Campos faced...
...Nevertheless, the President is not without leverage, for he appoints the chairmanof the Board...
...From its perspective, the most "transparent" thing about the TVN affair is how fragile the ruling coalition really is...
...The news division had repeatedly angered them with programs focusing on divorce, drugs and sex—culminating in an interview with a gay, HIV-positive priest that raised howls of outrage...
...Andashort while ago Frei had named his DC crony, attorney Luis Ortiz Quiroga, to the post...
...Besides Ortiz Quiroga, a second Board member, businessman Jorge Awad, is from the DC...
...Partly because of his personality and partly because of the delicacy of his situation as the first civilian President after the long dictatorship, Aylwin was a consensus-builder...
...The Left quickly dropped its demand for Ortiz Quiroga's departure...
...CRACKS IN THE COALITION Politics and Public TV in Chile BY ARTHUR M. SHAPIRO SANTIAGO ONE OF THE BUZZWORDS in post-Pinochet Chilean politics is transparencia—the condition of being open and aboveboard...
...TVN thus found itself on the defensive, and the station official identified as having authorized the operation, Patricia Politzer, was sacked along with Navarrete—a fact interArthur M. Shapiro, a previous NL contributor, is a professor of zoology at the University of California...
...In early November a shoe manufacturer named Raul Campos found himself in trouble with the Labor Department for employing undocumented Peruvian workers...
...They asked pointedly how the Concerlacion was supposed to function if Frei's people insisted on playing nasty games...
...The Left was unable to force Ortiz Quiroga's resignation, but it did thwart a takeover of TVN by Frei's men...
...Unfortunately, halfway through the payoff Ms...
...Navarrete is a card-carrying member of President Eduardo Frei's Christian Democratic Party (DC), the dominant partner in the coalition, known as the Cancellation, that has ruled the country since the restoration of democracy...
...But there is no lack of other hypotheses...
Vol. 78 • February 1995 • No. 2
