C Day

I don't mean to gloat.

Ok, maybe just a little.

The results of the Centro de Estudios Públicos poll were published today, available here.

They pretty much align with what I predicted yesterday. And, as I said, there's something for everyone.

I was wrong on one point, however. I thought that a 30% result for Frei would not be viewed positively. But expectations were so low, and Piñera's drop so precipitous, that the Concertación is celebrating. Because if you take Frei's share of the undecideds and his share of Enriquez-Ominami's vote, ceteris paribus, he should go over the top.

It's just too early in the electoral season, though, for ceteris paribus.

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CEP minus one

Slight interruption in our regularly scheduled programming, as I was attending a conference in Rio de Janeiro. It was good to see colleagues from around the world, and Rio was outstanding.

Back in smoggy Santiago, all the talk is about the CEP poll which comes out tomorrow. Despite the fact that public opinion polls are published every day, the CEP is considered to be the most reliable, and is the standard against which political campaigns rise or fall.

So, for those of you who will not be able to sleep all night waiting for the results, here's my prediction:

Piñera 35-39%

Frei 25-29%

Enriquez-Ominami 13-19%

Undecideds +/- 20%

You can all laugh at me tomorrow. But if I am right, it's a decent result for Ominami, a bad result for Frei, but not a good result for Piñera. I suspect that all the in-fighting in the Alianza in recent days is due to their own internal numbers, which show that Piñera has hit a ceiling.

So CEP will be a bit like the 2008 municipal elections: something for everyone.
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Red Set

Rafa Gumucio has an entertaining piece in today's Mercurio about Chile's 'red Set'.

He makes three interesting points. First, that like any ghetto, it was founded in the quest for safety, protection and mutual support. Accusations that the red set is a leftist, elitist, exclusionary clique, sound an awful lot like things one sometimes hears about Jewish or Chinese communties around the world.

Second, I like the image of the multi-cinema having encroached on his father's Castillo Velasco community. I know that community, and indeed, it more than encroaches. It looms over, overshadows, and warns its residents that no matter how unheated your rooms and how hard your exposed brick walls are, no matter how loud you play the Internationale on your Ipod, the outside world, and capitalism, is at your doorstep. You can run but you can't hide. In the end, you lost.

Third, the image of the last vestiges of left setiness having succumbed, under the Bachelet government, to the comforts of power and corruption. Gumucio suggets this is not all that bad -- it is the final step towards acceptance and reconciliation. But it's also the end of an era.

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Brown Resignation Watch I

Almost exactly twelve years ago I was living in London when Tony Blair won his first General Election and toppled the Conservatives. The reaction was not unlike the Obama victory – it seemed as if a dictator had fallen.

After the initial party, there were a few years of weird fluff: The Millennium Dome, The Spice Girls, Cool Britain, New Labour. But they were also good years from Britain, with a youthful, optimistic leader and a surging economy.

It was all good until 9/11. Then Tony – for the best reasons, I am convinced – sided with Dubbya, the country went to war, bombs went off in Central London. Tony could not hang on, and the long suffering Mr Brown claimed what he believed was rightfully his. But like Paul Martin in Canada, he discovered that a hero of a Finance Minister does not a Prime Minister make. Poor Gordon. To wait so long for this.

Well, it all seems to be coming to a crashing thud now. It is hard to see how Mr Brown can hang on.

In any event, it was nice to have that chat back in March, Gordon. Best of luck to you.

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Bureaucraspeak

Why are bureaucrats all the same? I meet public administration students every day. They are just like any other student -- maybe a bit more politically aware, maybe a bit more committed to public service -- but just like any other student. Some are even rather smart.

But something happens to them, either in the course of their studies or when they join the public service. Then, when some frustrated citizen complains about the height of his neighbour's garage, they come up with nuggets like

"The garage is slightly higher than it should be, only becuase of the way he built it."

Thanks. Brilliant. And you're only slightly dumber than you should be, but only because your brain is disfunctional.
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Death embrace to Ominamiville

In his latest post, UNC professor Greg Weeks says that the Concertación has to make the case against the idea that a Piñera government would not change things. If this is true, and it probably is, then the Concertación is in bigger trouble than I thought, because they spent most of the last twenty years trying to prove to the Chicago boys and others that they would not change things all that much.

Now the shoe is on the other foot (right foot? left foot?). Piñera, ex-DC, ex-middle-class, tries to show that he would not make significant changes to the economic model. President Bachelet's emphasis on social protection will make it a bit harder for Piñera to maintain that line. If he does, then he may have problems with his own Chicago Boys. But if that's the case, the Concertación may be pushed more to the left, alienating some on the middle. I am not entirely sure who's trapping who.
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Thanks but no thanks

Considering what I have spent the last four days doing -- and the next few days as well -- this piece brought on an inner guffaw.
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