General elections were held in Chile on 14 December 1989, bringing an end to the military regime that had been in place since 1973. Patricio Aylwin of Concertación alliance was elected President, whilst the alliance also won a majority of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and in the elected Senate seats.
From the 1989 elections onwards the military had officially left the political future of the country to civilians to be elected. Pinochet did not endorse any candidate publicly. Former dictatorship minister Hernán Büchi ran for president as candidate of the two right-wing parties, RN and UDI. He had little political experience and was a relatively young (40 years) technocrat credited for Chile's good economic performance in the later half of the 1980s. The right parties faced several problems in the elections: there was considerable infighting between RN and UDI, Büchi had only very reluctantly accepted to run for president and right-wing politicians struggled to define their position towards the Pinochet regime. In addition to this right-wing populist Francisco Javier Errázuriz Talavera ran independently for president and made several election promises Büchi could not match.
Definition of candidacies
Concertación
Candidate Aylwin prevailed in a political negotiation within the so-called Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia, which at that time was made up of 17 political movements opposed to the military dictatorship. However, the process was not simple. The situation of each party was as follows:
- Patricio Aylwin had to prevail within the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) itself against two other contenders: Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle and Gabriel Valdés Subercaseaux. It was a controversial process, saturated with accusations, including an episode involving the theft of internal voting records known as "Carmengate" (named as such for the then-address of the headquarters of the PDC, Carmen 8, in Downtown Santiago). During this process, Andrés Zaldívar was even proposed as a consensus candidate. Aylwin ultimately secured the support of his party and was proclaimed on February 5.
- The Radical Party put forward its leader Enrique Silva Cimma, who withdrew his candidacy on June 10 to support Patricio Aylwin.
- The Social Democracy Party put forward the candidacy of the lawyer Eugenio Velasco, who later withdrew his bid and on July 3 announced his support for Aylwin.
- The renewed sector of the Socialist Party (PS-Núñez) and the Party for Democracy put forward the figure of Ricardo Lagos, known for having confronted General Pinochet through television cameras. Both parties officially announced their support for Aylwin’s candidacy on June 23.
- The Humanist Party presented, in a testimonial manner, the candidacy of Laura Rodríguez, who at the time was below the required age to be a candidate. Subsequently, together with The Greens, it put forward José Tomás Sáenz as its candidate.
- The Socialist Party–Almeyda proclaimed Aylwin as its candidate on June 23.
- The candidacy of the independent Alejandro Hales also emerged, president of the Independents for the No movement, supported by the Almeyda faction of the Socialist Party.
The national organization, ideological moderation, and relative weight within the coalition ultimately led the Christian Democratic Party to determine the presidential candidacy. In this decision, the media prominence of Patricio Aylwin—when he previously obtained the nomination as spokesperson or “primus inter pares” among the leaders of the Concertación for the 1988 plebiscite—was influential, allowing him to secure the coalition’s backing over alternatives from the moderate left such as Ricardo Lagos, Alejandro Hales, and Enrique Silva Cimma, which were reconsidered toward the end of the process.
Aylwin’s nomination as the Concertación’s candidate took place on July 6—having already been proclaimed as their candidate by the Party of the Center Alliance on June 28 and by the Democratic Socialist Radical Party on July 2, as well as by the Christian Left on July 4—,while his formal proclamation was held on July 16, 1989, at the Teatro Caupolicán, a symbol of democratic resistance during the military dictatorship, under the slogan “The people win.”On August 2, the Broad Party of Socialist Left (PAIS) proclaimed Aylwin as its candidate.
Democracy and Progress
Supporters of Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship also underwent a lengthy process of deliberation to designate their candidate. The figure of Hernán Büchi—Minister of Finance and ideologue of the neoliberal reforms reintroduced in Chile after the 1982 crisis—generated sympathy due to his youthful image and his close association with the country’s supposedly successful economic recovery. However, Büchi systematically refused to accept the option of being a candidate and declined to do so in a speech delivered on May 15, 1989, which went down in Chilean political history, as he acknowledged that between his personality and the responsibility being imposed on him there existed a “vital contradiction,” thus renouncing his pre-candidacy.
In that context, on August 6 National Renewal designated former Interior Minister Sergio Onofre Jarpa as its nominee through an internal vote in which he obtained 272 votes in favor, 3 against, and one blank;the Radical Democracy did the same with former senator Julio Durán Neumann, while the UDI proclaimed Hernán Büchi despite his refusal.
Büchi finally accepted being a candidate on July 11,and in a political negotiation, the Democracy and Progress pact and the Radical Democracy partynamed him as their nominee under the slogan “Büchi is the man.” On August 10, he received the formal backing of National Renewal, which withdrew the support it had given to Sergio Onofre Jarpa only four days earlier.
His campaign “generalissimo” was former Pinochet minister and businessman Pablo Baraona, who assumed that role for economic coordination and as a member of the coalition’s main party, National Renewal. In its initial stage, the position was held by Sebastián Piñera, also a member of National Renewal, who did not assume that role in the final candidacy.
Francisco Javier Errázuriz Talavera
However, the right did not expect a third option to emerge. Businessman Francisco Javier Errázuriz Talavera carried forward his presidential candidacy outside the political parties. Declaring himself independent, he stated that he had “voted Yes with his heart in the No” in the 1988 plebiscite, and he sought a platform close to the political center to capture votes. He was supported by the Liberal Party, the Chilean Socialist Party (an instrumental party that supported the Yes, and unrelated to the current Socialist Party), and the National Advance party, as well as the National Party and the Party of the South, all parties with local leadership and limited media reach. The campaign slogan was: “Errázuriz, the opportunity for a dignified Chile,” and his campaign generalissimo was Carlos Concha.
Failed candidacies
- The independent candidacy of the physician and philanthropist Fernando Monckeberg Barros was rejected on August 24, 1989, after his registration with the Electoral Service, for exceeding, in his lists of sponsoring voters, the percentage permitted by law of sponsors registered in political parties.
- In some media outlets, the Independent National Unity candidacy of television host Mario Kreutzberger, “Don Francisco,” associated with the philanthropic work of the Teletón, was proposed. The presenter flatly rejected the possibility.
- The leader of the Party of Pensioners, Juan Antonio Torres Araya, was sounded out as a presidential candidate; however, he did not achieve the party’s legalization nor gather the necessary signatures to present his candidacy.
Debate
The only presidential debate took place in the main studios of Channel 13 on October 9, 1989. It was moderated by Hernán Precht and featured journalists Rosario Guzmán Errázuriz, Bernardo de la Maza, Raquel Correa, and Claudio Sánchez Venegas, whose role was to ask questions to the candidates Hernán Büchi and Patricio Aylwin. The debate, which was the first to be televised in the history of Chile and Latin America, did not include the participation of candidate Francisco Javier Errázuriz, since, as Claudio Sánchez would later explain, “we could hold a debate with four candidates, but with three it was more complicated” (alluding to the rejected candidacy of Fernando Monckeberg). According to Sánchez, Errázuriz’s absence from the debate was offset by dedicating an additional episode of the program Decisión 89 to the businessman’s candidacy.