Chileans Show Buyer ’s Remorse with Left’s Agenda

The big question ahead of this year ’s presidential election in Chile was whether Chileans were actually fed up with their country’s free-market model, or whether they were satisfied with it, but just indifferent to the ideological debate surrounding it. Up until yesterday’s run-off election, there were mixed signals. However, t he decisive victory of center-right Sebastián Piñera over socialist Alejandro Guillier could be interpreted as a popular slap on the back of Chile’s successful economic model.For nearly 20 years after the return of democracy in 1990, Chile enjoyed a political consensus on its liberal economic system. Successive center-left governments deepened the free market policies inherited from the military dictatorship, with evident success: Chile became Latin America ’s most prosperous country. However, the free market consensus began to fray late last decade. Driven by massive student protests that demanded more government intervention in education—including universal free tuition in higher education—certain sectors of the erstwhile moderate center-left c oalition began to openly question the free-market model. The first spell in opposition of the center-left coalition after the return of democracy in 2010-2014 (Piñera’s first term as president) consolidated this transformation.When Michelle Bachelet became president again in 2014, her new left-wing coalition included for the first time the Communist Party, which now wields a lot of influenc...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs