CHILEAN CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS 101

UNCLAS SANTIAGO 000432

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV CI
SUBJECT: CHILEAN CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS 101

REF: 08 Santiago 24


1. (SBU) Summary: All 120 Chamber of Deputy seats and 18 of the 38
Senate seats are in play in Chile's congressional elections, which
will occur in December together with the presidential election.
Chile's "binomial" system, designed by the Pinochet military
government, favors the right. The Concertacion's proposed pact with
the Communist Party (PC),aimed at garnering a few deputy seats for
the PC, would ensure PC support for presidential candidate Frei in a
probable run-off election, but might push some DC voters to vote for
Pinera in the first round. End Summary.

Chile's Congress
--------------


2. (U) Chile's legislative branch of government is comprised of a
Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. Thirty-eight Senators
representing 19 circumscriptions (as senatorial districts are known)
serve eight-year terms and 120 Deputies representing 60 districts
serve four-year terms. Senators and deputies can be re-elected
indefinitely and are not required to reside in the districts they
represent. Congressional elections occur every four years, together
with presidential elections. In this year's December elections all
120 chamber seats and 18 senate seats are in play. The remaining 20
senators will not face elections until 2014.


3. (U) The Concertacion coalition, made up of the Socialist Party
(PD),the Party for Democracy (PPD),the Radical Social Democrat
Party (PRSD),and the Christian Democrats (DC),is the governing
coalition and holds a plurality of seats in both chambers, but does
not maintain a working majority in either house of Congress. This
is in part due to the binomial system (see para 5 and 6) and in part
due to a series of defections during the last few years that have
led several deputies and senators to turn independent, to establish
their own movements (such as Chile Primero),or to join other
parties like the Independent Regionalist Party (PRI) (reftel). The
opposition Alianza coalition is made up of the center-right National
Renewal Party (RN) and the conservative Independent Democratic Union
(UDI).


4. (U) In the Chamber of Deputies, the Concertacion holds 57 seats;
the Alianza 53 seats; the PRI 3 seats; and there are 7 independents.
In the Senate, the Concertacion holds 17 seats; the Alianza 16
seats; and there are 5 independents or representatives of smaller
parties or movements.

The Binomial System
--------------


5. (U) Chile's 1980 constitution -- implemented during the Pinochet
dictatorship -- put in place the unique "binomial" electoral system.
Each coalition or political party presents a slate of two Senate
candidates for each circumscription and another slate of two Chamber
of Deputies candidates for each district. Voters cast ballots for
one Senate candidate and one Chamber of Deputies candidate. The
slate with the most votes earns one of the two seats, with the seat
being awarded to the candidate on the slate with the highest number
of votes. However, a single slate of candidates must outperform the
second-place slate of candidates by a margin of more than two-to-one
in order to gain both seats. As Chile's congressional elections
have been dominated by two coalitions, in practice this has meant
that the winning list must receive roughly 66 percent of the votes
to gain both seats, a process known as "doubling." Due to
difficulty of achieving this electoral feat, the Alianza and the
Concertacion typically each win one seat per Senate circumscription
and one per Chamber of Deputies district.


6. (U) Because the bar for winning both seats in a district is so
high -- 66 percent of the votes cast -- a coalition must put up two
very strong candidates in the same district if it hopes to do so.
However, with this strategy the coalition runs the risk that one of
those candidates may be left out in the cold (if they don't double
the number of votes of their competitors). Former President Ricardo
Lagos' (PPD) loss in a 1989 senate race is a famous example of the
dangers of this strategy. Lagos' running mate, Christian Democrat
(DC) Andres Zaldivar, won 31.3 percent of the votes, while Lagos won
30.6 percent. Because Zaldivar and Lagos together (61.9 percent)
did not "double" their opponents' total (32.5 percent),the UDI's
Jaime Guzman was elected to serve in the Senate with Zaldivar.
Guzman had received 17.2 percent of the votes to Lagos' 30.6
percent.

Gerrymandering: Still Marked by 1988
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7. (U) Senate circumscriptions and Chamber districts were drawn up
by the military government after the 1988 plebiscite in preparation
for open presidential and parliamentary elections in 1989. With
plebiscite electoral results in hand, they gerrymandered the
electoral districts to maximize areas that had supported the
military government in the plebiscite. Chamber districts are not
based on population, but in this design, which made the
vote-per-seat ratio low in rural areas where Pinochet had received
more support. The end result: the 20 least populated districts
elect 40 deputies while the 7 most populated districts --
representing roughly the same population -- elect only 14 deputies.
Many Senate circumscriptions are the same as Chile's regions
(similar to the U.S., where Senate districts are states),but some
regions are divided into two circumscriptions.

An End to "Exclusion": The Concertacion Pact with the PC
-------------- -------------- --------------


8. (U) Electoral reform of the binomial system has been a
Concertacion proposal since the transition to democracy, but such
constitutional reform requires a super-majority, and, thanks to the
binomial system, the Right effectively holds veto power over such
reforms. The argument for changing the system is that it distorts
voter intentions by over-representing the minority coalition and
excluding third parties, such as the Communist or Humanist parties.
For this reason, these smaller parties are referred to as the
"Extra-Parliamentary Left" and their absence in Congress -- the
Communists and the Humanists receive anywhere from five to ten
percent of votes when running together -- is referred to as
"exclusion."


9. (U) Despite the fact that the binomial system gives the Alianza
a much larger congressional delegation than a single member district
system would, the Concertacion appears to be comfortable with a
system it already knows and has not pushed for serious reform.
(Note: Press reports indicate that it will do so mid-year, though
any call to change the system at this time will be more of an
electoral move than a true push for reform. End note.) A
short-term Concertacion remedy for this year's elections is to end
the "exclusion" of smaller parties by entering into an electoral
pact with the Communists. Negotiations between the Concertacion and
the Communist party are still underway.

COMMENT
--------------


10. (SBU) Chile's congressional system is not a perfect picture.
Elected parliamentarians -- even in the lower house, the Chamber of
Deputies -- represent, and are elected by, vastly different numbers
of voters, thanks to the binomial system and chamber districts of
varying size. As a result, city dwellers, Concertacion supporters,
and voters for candidates or parties outside the two main coalitions
are perennially underrepresented in Congress. Yet there is
surprisingly little genuine impetus for serious reform -- perhaps an
indication that the binomial system is one of the Pinochet vestiges
still too sensitive to truly challenge. The potential
Concertacion-Communist party pact would ensure Communist party
support for Concertacion presidential candidate Frei in a probable
runoff election. However, the move could also alienate enough DC
voters to give Pinera a slight advantage in the first round. End
comment.
SIMONS