Trends point to the fact that the parliamentary election may give government an absolute majority, something more than 50% of votes and the opposition a close percentage, slighly higher than the one obtained in the municipal election with around 43 or 44%. In other words, government may drop one point or a bit more, perhaps two points in a worst case scenario and the opposition might win 1 or 2 points, That is the size of the change today at stake in this election. It is not a white to black shift, it is a slow change.

How would the Senate make-up remain according to these figures?

Considering these figures, government could retain the majority plus one of the Parliament congressmen and could also maintain the majority plus one of lawmakers. Now, under Chilean law and Constitution drafted by General Pinochet in the ‘80s, those simple majorities are not enough for the reforms raised by the government plan.

This means that while government will lose some parliamentarians, the loss does not deprive it from the majority neither does it give it the power it needs, which are wualified majorities under the Constitutions where usually need 66% of votes of both Houses to pass some reform. The Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia, which made the transition, has never held such a huge majority never in the 10 years of government.

From the communicational perspective, the decline in the number of parliamentarians is almost a good thing for government. This same difficulty it has and will have for reforms and passage of laws have been endured throughout the decade. But people’s perception and the international perception held that the governments of Concertación enjoyed a comfortable majority despite the existence of the appointed senators and the qualified majorities that rejected the passage of reforms. So I believe that in political terms, the government will benefit itself because people will fully understand that their majorities are quite narrow and so they do not have ‘the power to’

The thing is they have never had it and in Chile all reforms made have been reached through the votes of the opposition. Here it is not possible to base a reform or make a substantial change that enables to make a change in any aspect (public policies, education, health, housing or taxes) without the opposition’s approval. So all reforms made throughout the decade have been through talks with the opposition and the necessary votes required under the Constitutions. Thta is why so few reforms have been made....

How does the public opinion perceive the electoral reform?

There is no ‘public opinion’ on the binominal system though there is a voters’ reaction that ends up distancing from politics due to the fact that the binominal lae ‘chooses’ the candidate at the parties’ table of negotiations. According to the number of voters in a region or certain district, the party knows that place is somehow secured.

‘Voters are a bit confused: they do not know whether they are choosing
the presidential candidate for 2005 or a parliament’

Therefore, by nominating the candidate, in one way or other they are nominating the representative and that distort caused by the binominal law is somehow perceived by voters as a trap, a lack of power to choose. So voters go back home, do not vote and abstention occurs. It is not that voters have an intellectual conceptualization of which the best law is: what they do know is that law prevents them from choosing in a direct competition, in a more proportional system that would allow them to make a better choice among parties. A more democratic, transparent competition. The electoral law has an indirect effect on the electoral behavior. In the last parliamentary election only 6 out of 10 Chileans voted legitimately. It is likely that number will decrease even more and only 5 out of 10 around half of the electorate will not cast ballots. An that is, in part, the result of the binominal system for in many place it is already known who the representatives are and electors do not view a possible change in that.

50% is quite a low turnout percentage...

We are likely to experience a historical percentage of electoral abstention. It must be noted that in that 50% I am including those who will not cast a valid vote, those that are not registered, abstentions, blank and void votes for the Chilean law only acknowledges validly issued ballots. That is to say, the voters who marked his preference in a transparent way in favor of a person.

Could you make a sociological analysis of electoral turnout? How do young people, women and men vote?

Simple and wrong explanations are usually given in this regard. Here electoral abstention is blamed on the youth, when it is clear that it involves all social strata. Through polls we are able to identify different segments. We identify youths who are increasingly less important because they have a lower influence in the total (100 thousand youths increase in number every year and some 40 thousand are registered). But there is also the non-registration of people who are no longer 18 but 32 and there is also the non-participation of the generation who lived in democracy in Chile (what I call the First Republic before the 1973 coup d'etat) who is disappointed with this ‘quasi-democracy’. So there are two reasons to be out of the system and refuse to vote: one, disapointment with democracy. The other, disappointed with the electoral system that does not allow for a competitive participation. Here, the reason for abstention is quite specific and many of those voting void today, refrain or refuse to register consider Pinochet’s Constitution is against democracy and so they punish Concertación for failing to make the necessary changes to build a fully democratic Constitution.