Gen. Pinochet Won’t Quietly Fade Away in Chile

SANTIAGO, Chile — His supporters are bickering and he is a lame-duck president tarnished by a trouncing at the polls, but Gen. Augusto Pinochet has no plans to retire quietly to a country villa.

Pinochet and his military allies are reminding Chileans that when his term ends next March, he will merely move from the presidential palace to a new office across the street in the Defense Ministry.

From there, Pinochet will preside as commander in chief of the army for up to eight more years, in the same post he held when he toppled the last elected government in 1973, ever watchful for signs that the civilian politicians want to undo his work. Pinochet’s own constitution guarantees him the job, and the army has said that any attempt to oust him will be countered by force if necessary.

The opposition, meanwhile, appears almost certain to win the presidency and a congressional majority in elections in December. With Pinochet refusing to fade from the scene, and his longtime foes likely to take over the government, few Chileans are predicting a harmonious transition back to civilian rule.

The 17-party opposition coalition has defied predictions that it would collapse into squabbling factions after defeating Pinochet in a plebiscite last October and thus denying him another eight years as president. The coalition, ranging from left to center-right, stood firm in recent months on its demand for constitutional reform and in drafting a unity slate of nominees.

The political right, however, split into two camps after the plebiscite: Those farthest to the right and closest to Pinochet sought the candidacy of his former finance minister, Hernan Buchi, while the more traditional conservative sector supported veteran politician Sergio Onofre Jarpa, president of the National Renovation party.

Buchi, a long-haired 40-year-old who represents the ultra-free market philosophy of Pinochet and Chile’s steady growth in recent years, declined the candidacy in May. But this month he gave in to a vigorous psychological campaign appealing for him to run.

The Buchi movement is led mainly by business people fearful that Jarpa, experienced in political give-and-take as a former senator, will yield to pressure for higher wages and other social demands.

Buchi’s return to the race left rightists divided on whether to unite behind the young technocrat, who looks stronger than Jarpa in the polls, or to dilute its strength with two candidates.

The opposition proved able to reach accords more easily than the right.

Patricio Aylwin, a genial 70-year-old lawyer and lifetime politician, won endorsement from all sides based partly on his success in overseeing the October plebiscite campaign. As president of the well-organized, centrist Christian Democratic Party, the former senator offers a moderate visage for the movement. Aylwin holds a commanding lead in the polls of up to 13% over Buchi and far more over Jarpa.

But Aylwin quickly encountered what may be his real opposition as president. He suggested in June that Pinochet, as the principal political figure in Chile for 16 years, should leave the army leadership to a nonpolitical career officer. That prompted a public threat of the use of force against anyone who challenged the military’s 1980 constitution by trying to oust Pinochet.

Unlike neighboring Argentina, where the armed forces slunk from power in 1983 after a repressive dictatorship and a humiliating defeat in the Falkland Islands War against Britain, Chile’s military remains strong and proud of its handling of the country since 1973. Pinochet and other officers have said that the armed forces will serve as guarantor of national harmony and order.

Pinochet has suggested he will have “a kind of cohabitation” with the new government rather than be subordinate to it. His administration is appointing hundreds of mayors, judges and other officials loyal to him who will stay on after he leaves office.

The armed forces have said they will not permit trials for alleged human rights offenses, including allegations of widespread torture and hundreds of disappearances. Many analysts expect a compromise in which an investigation would be held to document the past, followed by an amnesty to avoid a showdown.

The military appears to be suspicious of any professional politician, whether on the left or right. The navy’s member of the armed forces junta, Adm. Jose Toribio Merino, said recently that he preferred Buchi as a presidential candidate because “Jarpa doesn’t play golf.” Jarpa responded that he didn’t have time for golf or polo or other sports but that he was pleased Merino did.

Jarpa, committed to consolidating the nation’s political institutions, endorsed the opposition’s demands for constitutional reforms to limit the military’s future role. That ensured support for change from most of the political spectrum and virtually forced Pinochet to make concessions after initially vowing not to consider the notion.

Pinochet agreed to a plebiscite, scheduled for July 30, that is certain to ratify those changes, including: making it easier to amend the constitution, now almost impossible; reducing the coming presidential term from eight years to four; increasing the number of elected senators from 26 to 38, thus eliminating a near-veto capability by 10 appointed members of the Senate; removing a clause interpreted as outlawing communist ideology and parties, and adding another civilian to the powerful National Security Council so that it will have four civilian as well as four military members.

Jarpa’s National Renovation party has steadily distanced itself from Pinochet, seeking to identify itself with a democratic future rather than as a tool of a defeated president. The other, more pro-Pinochet rightist party, the Democratic Independent Union, sided with Buchi.

Buchi will have to contend with charges that he is Pinochet’s front man, and some opposition leaders see him as easy to beat, while they respect Jarpa as a professional beyond Pinochet’s control.

The several factions of former President Salvador Allende’s old Chilean Socialist Party, which split in the years after Allende’s Marxist administration was overthrown by Pinochet, endorsed Aylwin, despite his having virtually welcomed the 1973 coup against Allende to end the social and economic chaos of his three years in office.

“It would have been easier with any other Christian Democrat. Aylwin is the expression of a very tough posture toward Allende,” said Sergio Bitar, a leader of the leftist Party for Democracy and a former Allende Cabinet minister. “But there has been a political catharsis. We realize that in these years we have had to pay the costs of the divisions. Now there is an understanding, a recognition of what we share in common.”

Bitar said the Socialists themselves have undergone important changes, many after living in exile in Eastern and Western Europe and studying in the United States. “No one would have believed that we could achieve this unity--a unified list of candidates, a soft landing--and a conviction that democracy needs stability, and that we have to act gradually.”

The Christian Democrats themselves went through an internal struggle in recent months, debating whether the key role they played in the plebiscite victory over Pinochet entitled them to a lion’s share of seats in the future congress. Finally, a majority decided to yield a substantial number of candidacies to other members of the opposition alliance, rather than alienate smaller, more leftist parties and risk competing with other members of the opposition for the 120 lower house and 38 Senate seats, something that could hand the races to the right.

Edgardo Boeninger, another Christian Democratic vice president, said that both the socialist left and the democratic right have learned that they must negotiate differences to preserve democracy.

If the current trend for compromise takes hold, he said, “then we can build a stable regime for the first time in 25 years.”