Chile's Next President Will Emphasize Efficienct

Chile's 'Berlusconi' puts efficiency top of election agenda
By Oliver Balch in Buenos Aires
Published: October 27 2009 02:00 Last updated: October 27 2009 02:00
Buenos Aires rush hour traffic lets up for no man, not even billionaire Chileans with a date to see the Argentine president.
Sebastián Piñera covers his growing agitation at the stop-start traffic with practised calm. He is a man in a hurry. Not only is Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina's premier, waiting for him. So, too, is the presidential seat back home.
As head of Chile's right-wing coalition, Mr Piñera is enjoying a comfortable lead in the run-up to national elections in December. After 19 years of the left-wing Concertación alliance, Chileans are showing an appetite for change. But not too much, which is just what Mr Piñera is offering.
"Our objective is to maintain the network of social protection that has been constructed by the last governments . . . but to make it more efficient," he tells the Financial Times in the back of his official car.
"Efficiency" is the watchword for this entrepreneur turned politician. There will be no messing with the policies that investors have come to love about Chile: balanced budgets, open markets, stable institutions and respect for the rule of law.
One of the country's richest men - known to his critics as "Chile's Silvio Berlusconi"- Mr Piñera's pitch rests on bringing business-like proficiency to that package. "Efficiency isn't a word that only interests the world of private companies. Efficiency is a word that does - or ought to - interest the world of politics," he argues.
His message is "better, quicker" delivery across the public sector. He pledges to root out inefficiencies and slash bureaucracy in healthcare, public education and crime prevention. So far, so standard.
As for the role of the state in general, he concedes a place for government in bringing about "profound modernisations", but decries any excessive dallying in the private sector.
"We want a state that strengthens its muscles but doesn't accumulate fat," he says, giving a nod to those on both the left and right of Chile's political spectrum.
Yet Mr Piñera's effort to present himself as a moderate voice and transitional president has still to convince some voters.
For starters, questions have been raised about his business activities. His personal fortune derives from introducing credit cards into Chile in the late 1970s. Since then, his portfolio of assets has expanded to include the terrestrial television channel Chilevisión and a stake of about 27 per cent in former state airline LAN. "He's never really separated his politician side from his business side," says Patricio Navia, a Latin American specialist at New York University.
Although Mr Piñera recently placed his investments under the control of a blind trust, he continues to run his political campaign from the headquarters of his business operations. That makes people wary, says Mr Navia.
The nickname of "Chile's Berlusconi" drew strength when it emerged that Mr Piñera had undergone plastic surgery on his eyelids. He rejects the comparison with Italy's prime minister as neither "just nor adequate". As for the surgery, that was to help correct his peripheral vision, he said.
"Berlusconi is not a saint of my devotion. I have profound differences from him," he says.
Questions also surround Mr Piñera's views on the Pinochet dictatorship, in which his brother was a cabinet minister.
A former senator and self-proclaimed Christian Humanist, Mr Piñera insists he voted against the continuation of the Pinochet regime in a 1988 referendum. Yet a year later he backed the presidential campaign of Mr Pinochet's finance minister. "With Piñera comes a more modernised, more democratic right . . . but also part of the political right that is linked to the dictatorship," argues José Jara, director of the political research centre Flacso Chile.
Fortunately for Mr Piñera, the ruling Concertación alliance is in disarray. Despite record personal approval ratings of more 70 per cent for President Michele Bachelet, Chile's ruling coalition has lost steam after almost two decades in power.
Concertación's candidate, Eduardo Frei, holds second place in the opinion polls. Yet most surveys put him 10 per cent or more behind Mr Piñera, who enjoys ratings of about 37 per cent.
This is Mr Piñera's second attempt at the presidency. In 2005, he lost to Ms Bachelet in a run-off. Despite the ruling party's problems, Chile's presidential hopeful has so far held off from negative campaigning. "The government has good intentions, but it hasn't been successful in achieving these," he says.