Chile: A Mandate to Serve

Before last week's congressional elections in Chile, two candidates in the staunchly conservative lake district did not even bother to campaign. They were Christian Democrats and sure to lose. They won. Three party stalwarts offered their names only to fill out the ballot. They were going to Moscow, Bonn and Bern as ambassadors. They won. In fact, practically anyone could have won in Chile last week— if he ran under the banner of Chile's Christian Democratic President Eduardo Frei "This," said Frei, "has been a veritable earthquake."

Down with the Ducks. For Frei (rhymes with day), the elections were do or die in the truest sense. In his presidential campaign last summer against Communist-backed Salvador Allende, Frei promised voters a long list of desperately needed economic and social reforms. Partly because of his personal appeal and partly because of widespread distaste for the Marxist Allende, Frei rolled up the largest plurality in Chilean history. Yet in office he faced a lame-duck Congress, in which his party held a scant 33 of the 192 seats, so few that he was unable to win passage of a single major bill. In the congressional campaign, Frei's party urged the voters to make a Parliament for Frei." At best the experts gave Christian Democrats only 65 seats. There were too many parties, too many local issues to drain away votes.

Then came the earthquake. When the last of the 2,300,000 ballots had been counted, Frei's Christian Democrats had won 82 Deputies' seats a gam of 53, making it the first government party to win an absolute majority since 1851. In the Senate, where 21 of 45 seats were at stake, the Christian Democrats wound up with 13 seats, up from only four.

The results were more than a surprise victory for Frei. They meant a change in the whole political map of Chile. After last September's presidential elections, the country's radicals, conservatives and liberals claimed that only their support put Frei over the top as President. Last week Frei exploded that myth once and for all, cutting their combined legislative seats from 110 to 46.

How did he do it? "There are a thousand factors," said Frei. Chile is one of the best-educated nations in Latin America, and its voters, with a long tradition of constitutional rule, tend to listen to the issues. There is a rising middle class, weary of inflation and do-nothing government. More essentially, it is Frei himself. Tall and gaunt, he is disarmingly unpretentious, a man who speaks but does not orate. What he says comes across with precision and a sure dedication— and that is apparently what Chileans want. "Few in Chile today," says one diplomat, "can argue with such a clear recognition of what the problems are, topped off with a good-humored informality that suggests nothing is impossible."

On with the Program. To foreign investors, Frei offers lower taxes and other inducements for expanding production; to the campesino, land reform; to slum dwellers, state-financed housing; to all taxpayers, an overhaul of the federal bureaucracy and a more efficient use of government funds. His plan to "Chileanize" the copper industry is typical of his give and take. Once Congress approves, the government will acquire a 25% interest in two new U.S. copper ventures and buy a 51% interest in the U.S.'s Braden Copper Co.