We've seen Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales fall all over themselves to immediately claim Chile as a new member of their anti-U.S. orbit. It's just not true.
On Wednesday, for example, Chile announced interest in studying free trade with two more nations - Malaysia and Thailand - extending its broad international presence, something that's anathema to the two Castroites.
What's more, the Bush administration was among the first to congratulate Chile's people and new president, an old friend and trading partner.
What they and those on the right who fear a "dangerous swing to the left" miss is that Chile's voters weren't electing 1960s-style radicals. They were voting to stay a course that's made their country the brightest star in Latin America. Chile leads the region in economic growth and, equally important, shows how well a two-coalition democracy works. Bachelet, encouragingly, vowed to keep Chile's economy "vibrant" and, unlike Chavez, declared a sincere intent to work with her political opponents. Sunday's election was not a reaction against capitalism and what the far left vaguely calls "neoliberalism."
It was a fourth term for the center-left coalition that has served the country responsibly since 1990. If winners like this can be called left wing, consider the fact that Chilean leaders are known for their free-trade pacts with the U.S., China and Europe, their fiscal prudence and their caution in extending social welfare benefits. Under their leadership, Chile has the highest budget surplus in Latin America, amounting to 4.5% of its $103 billion GDP.
It's kept government intrusion minimal, the private sector alive and the economy growing at a respectable 6.3% rate in 2005. And unlike its neighbors, it has a 25% investment-to-GDP ratio, showing voters' belief in the future. Unemployment is still a socialistic 8%, but it tops other countries in the region, and with severe poverty reduced to 19%, one of every 16 Chileans have moved to the middle class since 1995.
The center-left government has pragmatically retained Chile's popular private pension plan launched in 1981 under its historic enemy, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and now vows to improve it.
The Bachelet coalition's program is so mainstream that its conservative rival, led by Sebastian Pinera, had trouble distinguishing its own program from the Bachelet team's, signaling a broad consensus about free markets.
What's possibly most significant to many in Latin America is not Chile's leftward drift, but its clean election, executed swiftly and fairly.
That won't be lost on the region's voters, who are stuck in deeply flawed leftist regimes with ruined institutions and power concentrated at the edge of dictatorships, as in Venezuela.
For those voters, the sight of a left-leaning government that respects its opposition, opens itself to the world, refuses to drive its private sector to ruin and doesn't leave in a hail of bullets is a real alternative. That spells trouble for anti-democrats like Chavez.
Castro must know this; his congratulations were absent. Chile's a very different left democracy than the one Chavez and Morales think they are hailing. And one that's like the one represented in the U.S.
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