Pinochet still controls the Senate because his eight appointed senators,
along with the elected senators from the right-wing parties, constitute a majority. The right-wing bloc in the Senate has therefore been able to veto any constitutional reform proposal which threats to erode their privileged position. Within this category fall all attempts at annulling or changing the Amnesty Law from 1978 and legal reforms designed to ease the prosecut-ion of perpetrators of crimes during the dictatorship.
4.7.3 Political constraints
The political situation in Chile at the time of return to constitutional rule was very different from that of Argentina. The Chilean military had been defeated in elections for which they had themselves made the rules. As a result, the military was very much intact, and with Pinochet-friendly forces controlling the Senate, the Supreme Court, the regional governments, and
the top position in the military, one may at best be able to call the
transition government in Chile a "limited democracy", although free and fair elections were held. Obviously, the political constraints were at the outset much stronger than in Argentina. Furthermore, as outlined in the preceding chapter, the strong role of the military in forming the transition proeess and the rules of the game after the transition, ensured considerable legal and constitutional constraints for the implementation of a successful human rights policy.Acting within the constraints outline
d above, Aylwin opted for an
approach he called "possible justiee" (Rabkin 1992: 149), placing the main
emphasis of his human rights policy on the fact - fin ding aspect by the
launching of the Informe Rettig and implementing a much L arg er number
of reparational measures than in Argentina in the form of economic and legal recompensation. His main aim has apparently been to keep the military happy to the extent that they are not given any explicit reason for opting out of the rules of the new democratie game. The rules of the game
have to be firmly set to make sure that all parts are willing to abide by
them before one challenges the most important part of the opposition: themilitary forces.
With this, it seems less likely that significant progress will be made in
the quest for "total truth" , meaning, revealing the identity of the
perpetrators of past gross human rights violations - let alone ensuring legal justice, which is equally unrealistic. The recent attempts to confront the military forces with crimes carried out under its jurisdiction has proved that the democracy in Chile is still not fully consolidated. The military five-day display of power starting on 28 May 1993 while President Aylwin was
vi si ting the Scandinavian countries was partly a result of lawyers trying to speed up court cases against the military (La Nación, 30 May 1993). This
"sable-rattling" incidence was a follow-up of the first display of military discontent on 19 December 1990, when Pinochet declared a state of alert and ordered the army to its barracks.47 In spite of these two incidences, however, Chile has enjoyed an unexpectedly high degree of political stability after the regime change.
Aylwin successfully managed to calm down civil-military tension. He has later c1aimed that this military "sable-rattling" never amounted to more than noise, since the military failed to strike any cord of support in the public and the government refused to give in to any of the military' sdemands.
Aylwin also said that, in spite of democratic institutional deficiencies, he
considered Chile to be as stable as any European democracy (El País, 4
May 1994). The high degree of stability in Chile's political climate was
underlined by the re cent March 1994 elections, when Chile underwent its
first peaceful post-coup presidential change. The fact that Eduardo Frei from the Concertación has taken over the new presidency is an indication of both general public satisfaction with Aylwin' s policy as a whole, as well as a willingness to gi ve green light to the new government to pursue the same kind of policy line.48 Frei, in a speech said he would "fight to
47 For an account of this 1990 incident, the so-called enlace, see Rabkin 1992.
48 Eduardo Frei gained 58 per cent of the vote in the presidential elections on 11 December 1993 against right-wing candidate Arturo Allessandri's 24 per cent. Frei took office on 11 March 1994. His centre-Ieft Coalition for Democracy, Concertación, controls the House of Deputies, but the Right kept control of the Senate (International Herald
restore full presidential authority over the military" (International HeraZd Tribune, 13 December 1993). Aylwin's last move in the field of human
rights before formally handing over the presidential insignia to Frei in
Valparaiso on 3 March 1994 was to keep his promise of emptying Chilean prisons of political prisoners from the Pinochet period. There were 284political prisoners in Chile an jails when Aylwin took office in March 1990
(La Nación, 4 June 1993). The release of these prisoners had previously been protested by the military on the grounds that if so-called terrorists were set free, those military personneI under prosecution for human rights violations should also be exempted from being brought to court Aylwin therefore offered a choice between exile and continued imprisonment to the remaining forty-two political prisoners; all chose exile.49 This gesture was
his last attempt to set the tone for further reconciliation. It is up to the
current president, Eduardo Frei, to continue the reconciliatory policy line.The court' s rulings in the "Caso Degollados", as previously mentioned, may be seen as a good omen, but at the time when this is being written it is too early to predict what may follow. As Aylwin said in arecent
interview: "La democracia en Chile es aún imperfecta" - democracy in
Chile is still imperfect (El País, 4 May 1994). One may, however, sum up the conclusions drawn on the basis of the first post-military governments in Chile and Argentina respectively.4.8 The outeornes of the Chilean and Argentinean transitions:
a paradox
The hypotheses we set out to test at the beginning of this chapter predicted that Argentina had a higher chance of becoming consolidated than Chile.
What has in fact happened? From a formal point of view, president Aylwin and AlfonsÍn coincided in their human rights policy on two points: they issued governmental reports listing the names of victims of human rights abuses, and the reports were accompanied by the introduction of measures of economic compensation to the surviving victims and their families.
Tribune, 13 December 1993; Klassekampen, 13 December 1993; Aftenposten, 13
December 1993).
49 This includes five persons who were sentenced to life imprisonment for an attempt on Pinochets life in 1985, where five of his body-guards were killed. Two of the political ptIsoners, Marcos Mardones and Jorge Escobar, sentenced to 25 and 30 years of exile respectively by the Aylwin administration, have received political asylum in Norway, whereas the other three are currently living in the Netherlands (Klassekampen, 15 April
1994).
However, the measures of reparation were more extensive in Chile than in Argentina. The presidents' strategies diverge on the matter of legal justice.
Trials in Chile have been limited to the Letelier case, four years after the restoration of formal democracy, and the "Caso Degollados" after eight
years of investigation, in spite of considerable pressure from various
segments of society to condemn the alleged criminals. In Argentina the proeess took a decisive step forward with the holding of the military trials in 1985, but with Menem issuing sweeping pardons only five years later, the end result was the same in the two countries: very limited legal justice.
In spite of the presence of many more legal, constitutional, and political constraints at the moment of regime change in Chile than in Argentina, it seems like the final results of the human rights policies in the two countries
have not been all that different when measured in technical terms.
Nevertheless, Chile has frequently been cited as a more successful case of
consolidation than Argentina, i.e. quite opposite of what was predicted.50
What accounts for this apparent paradox?
The question is not only what the presidents actually did, but how they did it, and what effects the various measures have had on the two societies regarding reconciliation. As has been argued in this chapter, there was a close interaction between the initial policy embarked on by each president,