Dr. Collins' Election Comments

We asked Dr. Cath Collins, who edits a monthly bulletin about human rights trial developments in Chile and the region,, to comment on the recent election of President Sebastian Pinera and its possible effect on the fate of judicial cases for past human rights violations. Dr. Collins is head of the Human Rights Observatory of the School of Political Science at the University of Diego Portales in Santiago.

The bulletin is available in English and Spanish on-line and you can also subscribe (free of charge) to receive it monthly by email.

President Pinera and On-Going Human Rights Cases:

In March 2010, right wing candidate Sebastian Piñera put an end to two decades of centre-left government in Chile when he took over the presidency from outgoing Socialist Party representative Michelle Bachelet. This marked a major sea change in Chilean politics: Bachelet’s coalition had held the presidency in each of the previous 4 presidential elections since the return to democracy in 1990. Piñera’s two-party coalition includes the UDI party founded by Pinochet’s closest supporters during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship. The change has led to uncertainty and speculation over the fate of ongoing judicial cases for past human rights violations, as over human rights policy in general. Bachelet had forged a closer relationship with Chile’s historic human rights community than any of her predecessors, and one of her last official engagements had been the inauguration of the national Human Rights and Memory Museum that she commissioned. By contrast, a spokesman for the new president-elect stated in January 2010 that in his opinion the ongoing trials were ‘bad for the relatives [of the disappeared] and bad for our institutions’.

In many ways it is still too early to say what the change will mean in the immediate term for cases: the new administration has been preoccupied with other matters including the damage and disruption caused by a major earthquake in the south of Chile just days before the presidential handover. It is however possible that the new government will choose not to mark out its territory in the specific issue of human rights prosecutions. Any attempt to cut short or abandon the cases might well attract more political costs than benefits. While of great symbolic importance for the right in general and for Piñera’s more hardline supporters in particular, the issue is not a top public or political priority. The fanatical pro-Pinochet minority that carried placards of imprisoned regime figures out into the streets following the decisive second round, chanting ‘now they’ll all be released’, is likely to be disappointed. Any such flagrant interference with completed justice processes would generate unnecessary negative publicity, abroad and at home. Piñera’s margin of victory was relatively slim, and the now-opposition Concertación is well capable of blocking in Congress any initiative to truncate cases or shore up Chile’s weakened but still valid amnesty law. Although the Chilean judiciary has historically been given to following political signals, the recently-elected President of the Supreme Court is an independent and well respected figure. Milton Juica moreover made a name for himself in the late 1980s and 1990s with a series of measured and correct decisions in human rights cases that set him at odds with the political right, then in opposition.

The 300 cases currently making their way through the courts are being seen under Chile’s old investigative magistrate system, presently being phased out and due to disappear completely by the end of the year. In this setting, it may prove more comfortable for the new government to wait for the passage of time to remove the issue from the judicial agenda. The remaining cases are also unlikely to produce major surprises or major political embarrassments, as most of the 700 plus agents currently being investigated are long-retired and many have already been repeatedly charged and sentenced in other cases. The desire of judges, relatives and lawyers alike to see the cases through may in this sense produce an unlikely common purpose between them and the new political authorities. Early signs support this interpretation: the new head of the state-run Human Rights Programme system arrived in March with a generally conciliatory message for the lawyers charged with shepherding cases through the judicial system. Her only objection came when the question of instigating new cases was raised (almost two thirds of Chile’s 3,186 recognised victims of death and disappearance still have no judicial investigation either open or concluded). The branch of Chile’s detective force that investigates these cases under the direction of magistrates meanwhile suffered a setback from an eminently practical, rather than political, source: its headquarters were seriously damaged by the earthquake and investigative material dating back to 1991 has still to be rescued from the rubble and detritus. Overall, it seems likely that any change of policy will take the form of the gradual withdrawal of active support (never, in any case, particularly wholehearted) rather than active sabotage. It is now highly unlikely, for instance, that a longstanding but never completed Concertación undertaking to legislate a narrower interpretation of Chile’s manifestly illegal 1978 amnesty law will prosper.

Cath Collins
Human Rights Observatory
Universidad Diego Portales
Santiago de Chile
observatorioddhh@mail.udp.cl
5 April 2010