Pinera's approval rating now 54%

Chile's Center for the Study of Contemporary Reality (CERC, for it's spanish initials) today released the results of it's new public opinion poll. It shows Piñera's approval rating at a solid 54%. Though not directly comparable, this is one point higher than the Adimark poll released last month.

Not surprisingly, Piñera's approval rating is significantly lower in the areas most affected by last February's earthquake, coming in at 48%.

On an interesting side note, the CERC poll also shows that while Piñera's approval is high, 68% still want Bachelet to be president again. This is the bizarre state of affairs of Chilean politics today. One of the most successful political coalitions in the history of Latin America is voted out of office and replaced by a centrist conservative pledging change...who then proceeds to behave exactly like the coalition he replaced while his predecessor remains as popular as ever.

Chile's new ambassador to Argentina

Last week maladusted brought you the controversy surrounding the idiotic and neanderthal comments made by Chile's now former ambassador to Argentina. Long story short, Mr. Otero told people the Pinochet dictatorship wasn't a big deal or anything, cuz, you know, "most chileans didn't feel its impact."

Piñera proceeded to fire his ass and now hired a new guy named Adolfo Zaldívar. Well, courtesy of the always irreverent The Clinic, here's what Zaldívar had to say about his new boss late last year:

"Sebastian Piñera is the purest expression of the concentration of wealth and speculative capital that rules the world. He is not in a position to guarantee a behavior in line with what Chile needs from its head of state."

Awkward. Awkward indeed.

Chile: Another Public Relations Victory

Before his election last December, many commentators on the left expressed concern at the possibility of a Piñera presidency. And yet, despite it all, Piñera's first few months in office haven't turned out all that bad as he has largely stuck to Concertación policies. Robert Funk quite poignantly commented that Piñera's State of the Union address to Congress even sounded more like a fifth Concertación government than the return of the right.

So then why the concern before Piñera's election?

Well, because he's surrounded by people who say things like this:

"The majority of Chile didn't feel the impact of the dictatorship. On the contrary, they were relieved. Because before you couldn't buy anything imported, you had to pay for what was produced in Chile--expensive and bad. Over night, you started to find out what was missing. The people won. Then the streets were cleaned and people started to have jobs."

And who's the dumbass who said that? It's Miguel Otero, Chile's ambassador to Argentina and Renovación Nacional insider. Maladjusted has argued before that Piñera and his government lack a certain sensistivity when it comes to human rights and addressing the dictatorship's legacy, but this is just too much.

Will Piñera act with the same swiftness as in past scandals and fire Otero? Let's hope so.

Update:

Otto at IKN has the scoop: Piñera has booted Otero out of his post as ambassador. Props are definitely in order.

Adimark poll: Piñera's approval rating goes up

Last Friday the Chilean polling company Adimark released its latest monthly government performance poll. It shows Piñera's approval at its highest level since he took office, with 53% up from 50% last month. The overall gov.'s approval rating also went up 4 points, from 51% to 55% after having dropped sharply from 60% in April.

Also, there are no surprises here when it comes to the income demographics of Piñera's approval rating. The highest income groups, "ABC1" below, still supports him the most. And there's a clear downward trend down the income ladder.

Piñera's honeymoon coming to an end

It seems Piñera's honeymoon is ending. Yesterday the polling company Adimark released it's monthly government approval poll, showing a small two point decline in Piñera's approval rating. Of course, this decrease is within the 3 point margin of error, but Piñera's rate of disapproval has shot up 13 points since last month, reaching 31 percent.

One odd result from last month's poll was that the overall government received a much higher approval rating than Piñera personally, 60 percent vs. 52 percent respectively. This result was in part attributed to public perceptions regarding his, at the time, unresolved conflict of interest due to the delayed sale of his LanChile shares. Well now, however, the approval rating for the government as a whole has dropped 9 points to 51 percent, more or less matching Piñera's own rating.

But what accounts for the precipitous drop? As can be seen below, much of it is explained by public perception of the government's handling of the earthquake. The left side shows approval to the government's help towards earthquake victims and the right shows approval of the reconstruction effort.

[Independently of your political orientation, do you approve or disapprove of the way Sebastian Piñera and his government are handing the following problems related to the earthquake?]

An interesting thing has also happened during the last month regarding the income demographics of his support: it has fallen among the wealthiest and registered a small increase among the poorest (though the latter is within the margin of error).

Now, all in all these results are still obviously quite good, reflecting the fact that so far Piñera has actually done a pretty decent job all things considered, contrary to the left's fears. Obviously, experiencing one of the largest earthquakes on record might change your political agenda slightly and prompt some to govern more pragmatically. But nevertheless, Piñera the consummate businessman deserves some credit. Who would've expected the business presidency to talk about increasing mining royalties, raise corporate taxes and raid the military's trust fund, even if it's to pay for the reconstruction?

Paul Schäfer--nazi, pedophile, murderer--was buried today

Chile's La Nación today reported on Paul Schäfer's humble funeral in Santiago's parque del recuerdo cemetary. For those of you who don't know about Schäfer's comic book villain level of evil and the dystopian nazi cult community he ruled with an iron fist in the south of Chile, Colonia Dignidad (dignity colony), I recommend this great article.

Schäfer's story is so over the top and bizarre it's hard to convey without sounding made up. Long story short, he founded the Colonia Dignidad in 1961 after he was forced to flee his native Germany due to child molestation charges against him. The colony became a utopian German enclave isolated from the rest of Chilean society. It's members, known as colonos, dressed in traditional bavarian peasant garbs (no joke) and were completely beholden to Schäfer's rule.

Rumors of strange happenings, including rampant child abuse, have been common throughout the colony's history but it became most infamous during the Pinochet dictatorship. Schäfer gave the DINA (Pinochet's secret police) access to the colony's facilities to torture and murder political dissidents. According to victims who claim to have been tortured in the colony, Schäfer himself sometimes participated in the torturing and even trained the DINA in interrogation techniques.

At the time of his death, last saturday, Schäfer was serving a 20-year sentence for child molestation. However, charges related to kidnappings, arms trafficking and human rights abuses were pending. To this president Sebastian Piñera commented:

"The death of Paul Schäfer prevents the continuation of penal prosecution, because there isn't penal persecution in this world for the dead. However, we all know that there's a justice that never ends, and that's divine justice."

Well put. And this is certainly one of those times when I wish I believed in divine justice.

hmmm...

draw your own conclusions on this one (from the always irreverent The Clinic):

Piñera's first "uh oh" on Human Rights

Greg over at Two Weeks Notice reports that the Valech report, an important document on torture during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, has gone missing from the Ministry of Interior's website. It's not immediately clear why the new Piñera administration decided to remove such an important document from the Ministry's website but it has certainly angered the Association of the Families of the Disappeared, who referred to the removal as an "unacceptable aggression" and a "step backwards on human rights."

This type of insensitivy concerning human rights isn't exactly a shocker. As some might recall, last year during the presidential campaign Piñera was caught assuring retired army generals that human rights trials would come to an end under his government. In his words (my translation):

"In our government we're going to make sure that justice is applied to all our citizens, including those who are in active service or have retired, promptly and fairly, without perpetuating processes ad aeternum that never end."

Yes, that was a bit redundant. But more to the point, this speech behind closed doors to a room full of retired generals was met with outrage in Chile, prompting one senator to accuse Piñera of facilitating impunity in the country.

To be fair, and I'm no Piñera fan, this statement and the removal of the Valech report fits neatly into the right's discourse of moving forward and leaving the past alone. And yes, that has it's merits but, nevertheless, moving forward and pursuing reconciliation is different from forgetting and any government that is serious about human rights should be able to openly talk about them, especially when its members are perceived to have ties to a history of abuses.

Solidarity Fútbol

Yesterday Chile's new president Sebastian Piñera and Bolivia's Evo Morales played a "solidarity" game of fútbol. The speedy Otto over at IncaKola beat me to the scoop and also posted a great video of the whole affair. So go check it out, here.

On a completely unrelated note, Chile was hit by a 7.2 richter scale aftershock during the beginning of Piñera's presidential inauguration ceremony. Let's hope this isn't some sort of bad omen.