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Leftwing: peaceful, cooperative, "raise all boats."
What a contrast Pinera is to Batchelet (former leftist president of Chile), and to the prevailing leftist consensus in Latin America. This typically gross, greedy rightwing proposal--that Chile be the "platform" (hogger of) Chinese investment in LatAm-- is PRECISELY the sort of thing that Lula da Silva (former president of Brazil) and his successor Dilma Rousseff would NEVER DO. They have the prosperity, prestige and sheer size to throw Brazil's weight around and instead have acted to improve and empower the whole region. THEIR purpose is cooperative "south-south" trade on a more level playing field. They went out of their way, for instance, to help Bolivia, when the U.S. tried to tear Bolivia to pieces with a white separatist insurrection against Evo Morales' government. With Chile's Batchelet at the forefront, the region's leaders acted swiftly and strongly to back up Morales AND to help Bolivia. Brazil (one of Bolivia's main gas customers) made it clear to the white separatists (who were trying to take over Bolivia's main resource, gas) that they wouldn't trade with them. (So did Argentina.) Brazil, Venezuela and others put up funds to provide Bolivia with a link to the new transcontinental highway from Brazil and Chile's Batchelet provided landlocked Bolivia with access to the sea, at long last (a 100 year old dispute originating in the "War of the Pacific"). Pinera then RESCINDED this sea access agreement the moment he got into power. His philosophy: 'piss on the little guys.'
This is a very corrupt president of Chile--in particular in regard to transglobal gas interests (Bolivia's sea access involves a gas pipeline) and U.S. and Chilean war profiteers (they want to impose the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs'--one of the instruments of the attempted U.S. coup in Bolivia--on Bolivia, with DEA agents looking over their shoulders at their little bit of coastland; this is why Pinera won't yield sovereignty to Bolivia in the small sea access area). And I can only hope that Chile's leftists get their act together and throw this dinosaur out in the next election. I had a good opinion of him in the miner's rescue. I have changed my mind. His action on Bolivia's sea access and this--Chile seeking to be "dictator" of Chinese investment for the region--has shown him to be a tool of the rich against the poor.
The only explanation I've seen for why Chile voted for rightwing billionaire Pinera, rather than Batchelet's chosen successor, considering that Batchelet left office with an 80% approval rating (!), is that the Chilean socialists are not sufficiently leftist, as to internal policy. Chile may be prosperous in a "neo-liberal" way but it is not benefitting everybody. And though Batchelet's international policy was superb (peacemaker, "raise all boats," improve the region, defend each other against U.S. bullying), the socialist party's compromises with "neo-liberalism" have caused disaffection in the "rank and file" (labor, small business, the poor). The analysis I read said that Chile's socialist party needs "new blood"--needs to be reformed. In short, a lot of traditional socialist party voters sat on their hands in the post-Batchelet election, and that is how Chile--a predominantly leftist country (indeed, the most leftist country of them all, over the last half century--the MAIN target of the Nixon-Kissinger thugs)--ended up with this corporate/war profiteer tool as president.
I don't know if this explanation is correct. I STILL suspect election fraud--because Pinera's election was so unlikely--and I simply don't know if Chile has gone corporate on the voting machines, as the U.S. has (voting machines run on 'TRADE SECET' code with virtually no audit/recount controls--a made-to-order election theft system). I have read nothing to that effect. And Chile's socialist party would have had to go along with it (corporate-controlled election results), which seems even more unlikely. However, a couple of years ago, I would have said that it was impossible for the Democratic Party in the U.S. to go along with 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting, and have had to absorb that mindboggling betrayal by our party leaders. In any case, we need more info on Chile's election system.*
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*(I noticed that Peru had a small pilot project on e-voting in their recent election. It was not big enough to have prevented the leftist, Ollanta Humala from being elected, but it could well be used to put the rightwing back in power, in the future, if it is allowed to spread. 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting is LETHAL to democracy. There was also a pilot project--run by none other than Diebold--in Brazil, but I don't think it's very widespread there either. Latin Americans need to be vigilant about this, as well as about the recent U.S. State Department use of the OAS's name to conduct a fraudulent election in Haiti--a very worrisome precedent. The OAS election monitoring project has been mostly beneficial in the past.)
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