Left Behind
Londregan, John
Left Behind Chile’s retrograde socialists. BY JOHN LONDREGAN Santiago, Chile While the presidential primaries consumed the front pages of U.S. newspapers last week, the Colombian army’s...
...From a penchant for state-centered solutions, to a hostility towards law enforcement, to a disposition to impose abortion on a predominantly Catholic country, Chile’s Concertaci?n has proved remarkably hostile to personal and economic freedom...
...Last September, on the anniversary of the 1973 coup that brought down the government of Socialist president Salvador Allende, gangs of armed thugs roamed various neighborhoods of Santiago...
...A year later the same employees have “adapted”: They now leave home hours earlier, or drive to work, more than replacing the traffi c congestion that had been previously caused by the micros...
...Indeed, last January Chilean Socialist (and president of the Organization of American States) Jos...
...When the opposition dug in its heels, and even some members of the government coalition balked, the provision was modifi ed to allow for-profi t schools—provided all the profi ts are reinvested in education...
...During the period per capita incomes have approximately doubled, thanks to low tariffs and taxes, relatively little risk of sudden expropriation, and relatively little corruption...
...massive numbers of employees arrived hours late for work...
...Until about a year ago Santiago was criss-crossed by medium sized yellow buses popularly referred to as micros...
...Far from being the alternative left, the Concertaci?n seems to be overwhelmed by nostalgia for the failed statist policies that have proved so disastrous on so many occasions in the past...
...One group wielding Molotov cocktails attacked a Catholic school that served a poor neighborhood...
...Gradually public outcry has forced the government to buy additional buses and to extend existing routes...
...Where, one might ask, was the voice of Latin America’s “other left...
...When several major pharmacy chains took exception, they were threatened with massive fi nes until they buckled...
...Schaulsohn was expelled from the socialist Party for Democracy for having made the remark, but it appears to be an accurate one...
...newspapers last week, the Colombian army’s successful destruction of a base in Ecuador used by the FARC terrorists received only sporadic attention...
...They are now in a position to implement their shared program of “reform...
...How curious, therefore, that President Bachelet’s initial reaction to the strike against FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) was angrily to denounce Colombia’s actions as unacceptable...
...Businesses must endure the steady, hostile vigilance of government offi - cials who seem to think of entrepreneurs as “bloodsuckers,” to use the term of Socialist senator and presidential confi dant Camilo Escalona...
...The government has sought to play down the connection of these and many other similar crimes with a resurgence of terrorist groups...
...The new system has needed repeated budgetary infusions, now running on the order of $150 million every six months...
...Colombian president ?lvaro Uribe bravely stood up to terrorism...
...The policeman has been suspended...
...As it left power in 1990, Chile’s military government imposed a constitution loaded with checks and balances, mostly checks...
...So what is the agenda towards which they have been working so tirelessly for so many years...
...Chile’s ratings on various measures of economic competitiveness have been steadily declining...
...The government’s response...
...All of this has been very expensive...
...The seemingly chaotic microbus routes that refl ected consumer demand were replaced by fewer routes that refl ected the desires of central planners...
...The minister of health recently issued a regulation requiring all pharmacies to provide “morning-after pills” on demand, conscientious objection on the part of the pharmacist notwithstanding...
...The result: one policeman shot dead by the robbers as they fl ed the scene...
...Shortly thereafter a group calling themselves “Lautaristas” were surprised by the police during a daytime robbery of a bank in the center of Santiago...
...Was this based on evidence that the profi t motive destroys academic achievement...
...Except for the remarkable success of the Colombian army in locating and destroying a nest of terrorists, the main participants all behaved about as one would expect: Venezuelan president Hugo Ch?vez, Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, and the FARC acted like thugs...
...Miguel Insulza had the temerity to criticize Ch?vez’s silencing of an opposition TV station—an act of principle that earned Insulza a fi stful of obscene epithets from the petulant Ch?vez...
...the French government was caught appeasing another terrorist organization, while international bodies meant to keep the peace held long meetings with no substantive result...
...It blamed—the marketplace...
...However, confronted with the morningafter pill controversy, the Christian Democrats’ congressional delegation were mostly docile, save for caviling by the speaker of the lower chamber of Congress...
...Instead the government simply voiced its atavistic opposition to markets...
...From shoddy public works projects (one recently built bridge collapsed almost before it was fi nished) to state funds sequestered to pay political campaign workers, to secret “salary supplements” paid to cabinet ministers with state funds, to fraud in school subsidies so massive that even the Concertaci?n’s own comptroller general had to object—massive corruption has become increasingly common in the Concertaci?n’s Chile...
...A description of the crescendo of scandals that have characterized the Concertaci?n could fi ll a book...
...John Londregan, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton, is the author of Legislative Institutions and Ideology in Chile...
...To make an 18-year-long story short, the Concertaci?n has fi nally managed to place its own people in the supreme court, the constitutional court, the comptroller general’s offi ce, the national security council, the Senate, and so forth...
...The suspected shooter in the bank murder had been recently released from jail by a congressional amnesty for terrorists on the left...
...For example, on the same September day the policeman was shot defending the school, Socialist senator Alejandro Navarro joined street demonstrators and attacked a policeman, who had the audacity to hit back...
...The story goes on — police who act in self-defense are likely to face suspension...
...The second trait that seems to characterize the Concertaci?n has been a general reluctance to side with law enforcers who are confronting increasingly well-armed urban terrorists...
...Yet the Concertaci?n systematically denounces the very policies responsible for that prosperity...
...The only whisper of complaint inside the Concertaci?n came from a few members of the Christian Democratic party, whose manifesto clearly supports life and unequivocally opposes abortion...
...Then there is the burden of paperwork, which appears to be worsening...
...Most of the buses belonged to their drivers, or to very small enterprises (drivers would use their small savings to buy additional buses...
...Navarro continues to hold his seat in the Senate, where he openly receives campaign money from Hugo Ch?vez...
...For example, an education reform bill contained a provision banning “for-profi t” private schools...
...First, let’s consider a few of the Concertaci?n’s statist policies...
...Bachelet’s intemperate reaction to Colombia’s act of self defense is but the latest in a series of public statements and public policies that highlight the unwillingness of Chile’s left actually to be Latin America’s reasonable left of center alternative to the carnivores in Caracas and the homicidal ideologues in Havana...
...When several legislators balked at the repeated demands for cash to pay for “improvements” in a system that used to get people to work on time while running a profi t, they were threatened with expulsion from their parties...
...These made it hard to change status quo policies, which tended to be friendly towards markets...
...The government’s education policy has also been hostile to market solutions...
...Rather than showing the rest of Latin America the way towards the sunlit uplands of prosperity, the Chilean left seems determined to fi gure prominently in future editions of Mendoza et al’s classic 2000 book, The Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot...
...Bits of the poorly planned new system had been subcontracted to private bus companies, some of which delivered buses late, or failed to run their routes...
...The list of statist policies is lengthening, and the international business community has taken note...
...Journeys that had taken 45 minutes turned into halfday ordeals...
...Perhaps because of a diffi cult work stoppage by the drivers a few years ago, the government designed an antipollution “reform” that replaced the micros with far fewer large buses...
...What ought to come as a surprise— an unpleasant one—is the reaction of the president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet...
...Driven with the aggressiveness one usually associates with the (much smaller) taxicabs of New York, and spewing exhaust through catalytic converters in very questionable condition, the micros nevertheless provided cheap reliable transportation to virtually every part of Santiago...
...The third strand of policy being implemented by the Concertaci?n has been characterized by left of center Senator Jorge Schaulsohn as a “culture of corruption...
...Chile’s left of center governing coalition, the “Concertaci?n,” is often referred to as the alternative to the “toxic” or “predatory” left epitomized by the likes of the Castro brothers, Ch?vez, Correa, and Bolivia’s Evo Morales...
...many buses failed to run on their arbitrary schedules...
...When the police showed up (carrying nightsticks and plastic shields), several of the villains broke out their guns and began shooting, killing one of the police, who by order of President Bachelet are not permitted to carry guns with live ammunition...
...The micros were banished from Santiago in February 2007, and disaster ensued...
...Every Chilean president since March 1990 has been a part of the Concertaci?n...
...Bachelet has assumed “political responsibility” for the fracaso, meaning that few of the planners have been fi red...
...Perhaps the epitome of the Concertaci?n’s love for the state is their disastrous reform of the public transportation system in Santiago...
...In brief: statism, weakened law enforcement, and corruption...
Vol. 13 • March 2008 • No. 26
