Marco Enriquez –Ominami: The Obama of Chile? ...

Marco Enriquez –Ominami: The Obama of Chile? (Rachel Godfrey Wood/COHA)

Marco Enriquez –Ominami: The Obama of Chile?

August 28th 2009, by Rachel Godfrey Wood - Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA)

A Perilous Stretch Ahead for the Ruling Concertación

Coming off of Barack Obama’s stunning success in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, the “Change” campaign has been making its way down the western hemisphere and into the heart of Chile’s 2009 presidential race. In this instance, the candidate attempting to emulate Obama’s success is 36 year old newcomer Marco Enriquez-Ominami, better known as Marco. In a nation where the last four presidents have all emerged from the same political coalition, Marco intends to run on a platform based on “Cambio.” Running as an independent, Marco is a breath of fresh air in a nation dominated by fetid coalitions. The Chilean youth movement is growing restless and longs for a candidate they can call their own, and Marco is seeking to step in and fulfill that role. Given the substantial support that’s Marco’s “change” campaign enjoys from the youth movement in Chile, combined with the increasingly shabby performance of Concertación’s center piece, the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) this election, could result in the unprecedented event of a third-party candidate overpowering candidates from both the historically powerful center-left Concertación, and the right-wing Alianza por Chile coalitions.

Political Scene in Chile

Chile returned to democratic rule in 1990, and had to rebuild its political structure after the infamous military rule of Augusto Pinochet. Since then, a tired political system has produced a number of pecking orders, in which access is limited to those who join one of the existing alliances or coalitions with other like-minded political parties. There have been two longstanding coalitions constantly mobilized to do battle for power: the Concert of Parties for Democracy, better known as Concertación, and the Alliance for Chile, better known as La Alianza. The Concertación is a coalition consisting of several center-left political parties, including the Partido Demócrata Cristiano de Chile (PDC), Partido por la Democracia (PPD), Partido Socialista de Chile (PS), and Partido Radical Social Demócrata (PRSD). La Alianza is made up of right-wing parties that include the Renovación Nacional (RN) and Unión Democrática Independiente (UDI). Traditionally, Concertación has been highly successful in containing La Alianza in its bid for political authority, with every president elected since the end of the Pinochet era in 1990 being a member of its fold.

In 2006, Chile elected its first female president, Michelle Bachelet of the PS, who defeated the RN’s Sebastián Piñera Echeñique. Presidential elections are designed so that only a popular vote of 50 percent or more can determine the victory. If no candidate is able to garner the required votes in the first round of the election, a run-off ballot is scheduled between the two candidates with the highest number of votes. Bachelet won 45 percent of the votes in the first round of the election and 53 percent in the run-off. The election of Chile’s first female president was not only historic, but it allowed the Concertación, led by Bachelet, to continue its control over Chile’s highest office.

Who is Marco?

Marco was born on June 12, 1973, only months prior to the violent ousting of the democratically-elected Allende government and its replacement by the brutal Pinochet military dictatorship. Marco experienced the dangers of politics early on when his father, Miguel Enríquez Espinoza, was assassinated. Marco’s father had been a founder of the leftist revolutionary movement Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionario (MIR) and was a highly respected figure in the battle against the military regime. After the assassination of his father, Marco and his mother fled from Chile and relocated to France. He received his primary education there but returned to Santiago to attend university.

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