Electoral Rules: In 1938 Chile is a Presidential Republic in which the President holds a lot of power, elected for a six-year term (cannot run for re-election until after another term has passed) on a single round election, Congress choosing the President from the top-two candidates if no one recieves more than 50% of the vote. An unwritten rule has Congress award the Presidency to whoever came in first regardless of the size of plurality, a "gentleman's agreement" which may very well be tested in the future.
Prelude: After six years of energetic government, President Arturo Alessandri has managed to repair some of the harsh damage of the Great Depression and restore democracy and constitutional order in Chile during his second term following a dictatorship (1927-1931) and a brief socialist republic (1932). However, this has come at a great cost due to harsh repressive measures to restore order, Alessandri evolving from a center-left reformer to a center-right constitutionalist President and losing much of the popular fervor he once inspired. With extremist forces on the rise, what's next for Chilean democracy?
The Presidential Candidates:
Pedro Aguirre Cerda (PR) - Following a series of internal debates a majority of the Chilean left (Radicals, Communists and most Socialists) has united in the center-lefti to leftist
Frente Popular, inspired by the similar experiences in France and Spain. Highly critical of Alessandri's law and order stance and of Ross's economic record (whom they constantly disparage as
El Ministro del Hambre[1]), the
Frente Popular has nominated the 59-year old Pedro Aguirre Cerda, an eloquent and distinguished politician from the Radical Party as their candidate, seeking to expand towards the center to defeat the right. Aguirre Cerda runs on a platform of substantial educational reform and expansion, an economic agenda of industrialization, protectionism and developmentalism, international support for the Spanish Republic and opposition to fascism.
Gustavo Ross Santa María (PL) - Having served as Alessandri's Minister of Finance for five years, the technocratic and ocassionally tactless Ross is directly responsible for the economic recovery under Alessandri and is nicknamed by his supporters as
El mago de las finanzas[2]. A Manchesterian Liberal, Ross is the candidate of the Chilean center-right (represented by the Liberals and the Conservatives) and of continuity towards Alessandri despite the cool relationship between both men. Denuncing Ibañez as a demagogue and the
Frente Popular as revolutionaries, Ross portrays himself as the candidate of constitutional law and order as well as economic progress, advocating for an agenda of promotion of national values, modernization of the state, a liberal economic policy focused on exports and staunch anti-communism.
Carlos Ibañez del Campo (APL) - Having ruled Chile as an authoritarian dictator from 1927 to 1931 and presiding over an enormous expansion of public works, state intervention and a nationalist agenda before being forced to stand down after the Great Depression, General Ibañez is back. The most bitter enemy of President Alessandri, Ibañez has reinvented himself as the candidate of both nationalism and the hard-left, charging against Ross as a "corrupt capitalist" and Aguirre Cerda as a "weak moderate" breaking the unity of the true left. Supported by the
Alianza Popular Libertadora; a coalition including dissident Socialists, nationalists, independents,
Ibañistas and the National Socialist Movement [3], Ibañez is running on a populist and nationalist left platform, advocating for limited nationalization, a social agenda to combat poverty, the end of economic austerity and, despite the support of the
Nacistas, an "anti-imperalist and anti-fascist" foreign policy.
Two days.
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[1]
"The Hunger Minister".
[2]
"The Wizard of Finances".
[3] The Chilean Nazis, who saw themselves as left-wing.
Poll
