Scandals prompt sudden candidate switch for Chile's governing coalition.
| Autor | Witte-Lebhar, Benjamin |
A congressional "no-confidence" vote, a timely high court ruling, and some embarrassing media revelations have hit Chile's Alianza like a perfect storm, further dampening the governing coalition's hopes of fending off opposition challenger, popular ex-President Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), in November elections.
Desperate for some momentum following Bachelet's dramatic late-March leap into the presidential race (NotiSur, April 19, 2013), the two-party Alianza has instead been forced to backtrack --most notably by dumping its most popular presidential candidate Laurence Golborne, a former business executive who held several ministerial posts under President Sebastian Pinera.
Golborne soared to political prominence in 2010 when, as head of the Ministerio de Mineria, he helped orchestrate an ultimately successful effort to free nearly three dozen men from a partially collapsed mine in Chile's Atacama desert. The rescue of "los 33," as the miners were dubbed, was an international media sensation. It also provided a political boost, albeit a fleeting one, for Golborne's boss, President Pinera.
Unlike Pinera, whose approval rating fell precipitously starting in 2011, Golborne managed to preserve his post-rescue popularity. Touted as the right's best chance of retaining power past 2014, when Pinera's term runs out, the affable minister was eventually chosen to represent the hard-right Union Democrata Independiente (UDI) against Renovacion Nacional (RN) candidate Andres Allamand in next month's intra-Alianza presidential primary.
Two weeks ago, however, Golborne's political stock took a sudden and devastating plunge. On April 25, Chile's Corte Suprema de Justicia (CSJ) resolved a long-pending class-action suit against Golborne's former employer, retail giant Cencosud.
The case dates back to 2006, when Cencosud decided to increase service charges for users of one of its supermarket-chain credit cards. At the time, Golborne served as the company's general manager.
Consumers called the fee hike unnecessary and abusive. The CSJ agreed, ordering Cencosud to change its business practices and compensate its Jumbo Mas credit-card users to the tune of US$70 million.
Golborne responded to the ruling first by defending the company's controversial policy decision. "It doesn't seem abusive to me," he said. Later he tried to sidestep the issue by saying he had implemented the fee hikes on orders from above. Lambasted by the left, Golborne also took a beating...
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