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CHILE: Fast-Track for Bills on the Economy, Slow-Track for Social Issues

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Oct 26 2004 (IPS) - It took the Chilean Congress just one day to approve an agreement to eliminate double taxation on income arising from economic activities between Chile and Spain.

But a bill that would amend the constitution to give official recognition to the country’s indigenous peoples, who number around one million out of a total population of close to 16 million, has already spent 13.5 years in the legislature without making it past the first parliamentary hurdle.

A study by the local non-governmental organisation Corporación Representa found that bills aimed at the liberalisation and deregulation of the markets take 3.5 months on average to make it through parliament.

By contrast, draft laws focused on promoting equality in areas like citizen’s rights, education, gender rights or access to health care, or on expanding the country’s social safety nets, take an average of 46.9 months.

"These results show that in Chile, economic growth takes priority over demands for greater equality, which is a serious problem in a country that has the 11th worst distribution of wealth in the world," says the report by the Corporación Representa, whose executive director is journalist Patricio López.

Corporación Representa describes itself as an "independent think tank and public action centre that promotes civil society initiatives to revitalise the ideas of social justice, sustainable development and the deepening of democracy".

Referring to the study, José Ortiz, secretary-general of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), the main trade union federation, commented to IPS that "Chilean society is not represented in parliament. Political influence is exercised in the legislature by one single sector of society: big business."

"The problem is not only that the bills are delayed, but that when they are approved, they normally do not favour the majority, but only a sector that amounts to around five percent of Chilean society," the trade unionist added.

The free trade treaty between Chile and the United States was ratified by Congress in just two months, a similar deal with the European Union took three months, and an agreement with South Korea six months.

At the other extreme, the bill that would grant constitutional recognition to the country’s indigenous people was introduced by then president Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994) in 1991 – 164 months ago.

And another bill, aimed at the conservation and sustainable management of native forests, was submitted 149 months ago.

Unlike the "fast-track" or high urgency treatment received by free trade accords, it took the bill that finally made divorce legal in Chile 100 months (over eight years) to wind its way through the legislature, and the bill that created family courts 81 months.

A reform to Chile’s consumer defence law suffered a slightly better fate: it won approval in "only" 32 months.

The huge differences in the length of time it takes parliament to debate and vote on new laws also throws the quality of the work of the legislature into question, said Corporación Representa.

The group argued that the fact that the trade agreement with the United States made it through both houses in just two months raised doubts as to how carefully the 120 parliamentary deputies and 48 senators studied the 24-chapter trade deal.

With respect to bills dealing with the local economy, a reform of the capital market was enacted in four months and the creation of an investment platform in three months.

And it took parliament barely one month to approve a so-called "short law" that froze, for 10 years, the proportion of the catch to be extracted by the artisanal fishing sector at 20 percent of the total and the industrial fishing sector’s quota at 80 percent.

Deputy Adriana Muñoz with the Party for Democracy (PPD), which forms part of the centre-left coalition that has governed since Chile’s return to democracy in 1990, told IPS that attempts by the more progressive sectors to legislate in favour of in-depth changes on the social and economic fronts are hampered by the virtual tie in Congress with the right-wing opposition alliance.

The lawmaker pointed out that the requirement of a legislative quorum means that many laws cannot be approved by a simple majority, which leads to the need to seek compromise agreements.

The balance of forces in Congress was generated by Chile’s "binomial" electoral system, which is contained in the constitution that went into effect in 1980.

Under that system, only two senators and two deputies are elected for each district. This favours the "large minorities", whose representatives need to take just over one-third of the vote, while it excludes smaller forces like the Communist, Humanist or Green parties from Congress.

Muñoz said the inequality created by the binomial system, which was put in place by the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, is tilted even further in favour of the right by that sector’s strong ties to the business community, which provides it with resources to finance the "extremely costly election campaigns."

Deputy Patricio Melero of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), the main right-wing party, criticised the way the Corporación Representa report broke down the bills and laws into categories.

"There are many laws with a social or economic impact that have moved through the legislature with the required agility," Melero told IPS.

Besides, he added, "It is not fair to focus the criticism on parliament, because it is the executive branch that determines the speed with which the bills move through, since it assigns the urgency level, as stipulated by the 1980 constitution."

Deputy Arturo Longton of the rightist National Renovation Party also defended the work of the legislature, which he said has enacted a wide range of laws, not only economic, but also, for example, in favour of the disabled or to stimulate small and medium-sized companies.

Longton and Melero differed with respect to the binomial system. In Longton’s view, it is "not representative and reduces the legitimacy of the parliamentarians who are elected."

But for Melero, thanks to the current electoral system, Congress "is highly representative, of the regions as well as the different cultural and social levels and religions, etc., in the country."

"What the binomial system does is provide stability by enabling the country’s large coalitions to express themselves, while ensuring that the parliamentarians who make up the immense majority are not subject to blackmail by one or two legislators" from tiny parties, Melero argued.

Deputies Muñoz and María Antonieta Saa, who also belongs to the PPD, both criticised the binomial system for excluding small parties.

But Saa admitted that the government shares responsibility for the delays in the passage of laws involving social issues, because it controls the legislative agenda by assigning the level of urgency with which each bill is to be treated.

In Chile, every bill must go through three procedures in each house of Congress and in the mixed commissions. But it is the executive branch that previously classifies each bill under the categories "extremely urgent", "urgent" or "not urgent" – a mechanism that is often used to try to drum up majority support for a specific draft law.

José Llancapán, a representative of the Mapuche Indians (by far Chile’s largest indigenous group) in the government agency CONADI (National Corporation for Indigenous Development), told IPS that in his view, "the government yields to pressure from economic groups" which is why lawmakers "legislate with a mentality that overly favours the world of business."

He said that one of the factors that has stood in the way of passage of the constitutional amendment on recognition of indigenous peoples for over 13 years is the business community’s interest in gaining access to resources, like timber, located on land belonging to indigenous groups.

For Llancapán, "talking about the right-wing or about the Concertación (the governing coalition) with respect to their approach to the economy is basically the same thing. There is no difference."