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President of Chile

(Redirected from List of Presidents of Chile)

The President of Chile is both the chief of state and the head of government. The President is elected by popular vote for a six-year term. Beginning in 2006 the President will serve for a four-year term.

Contents

From Manuel Blanco Encalada to Ricardo Lagos

When Chile consolidated its independence from Spain, the power exerted by the Governor of Chile in the name of the King of Spain was tranferred to the new President of the Republic. This led to a political system which was authoritarian and gave enormous powers to the president, who was chosen indirectly by a period of five years with reelection. This system translated into four "decennial governments": José Joaquín Prieto , Manuel Bulnes , Manuel Montt and José Joaquín Pérez . In 1871, a constitutional reform eliminated reelection and established a mandate of five years. Presidents Federico Errázuriz, Aníbal Pinto , Domingo Santa María and José Manuel Balmaceda governed during this period.

Political order was structured through a semiopen "electoral intervention" on the part of the executive, which allowed him to remain in power and annul any opposition. This situation generated increased malaise in the political sectors of the old fashioned elite, finally exploding in the Civil War of 1891. With Balmaceda defeated, a parliamentary regime arose that diminished the authority of the President, turning it into a figure without a fundamental role in the country's progress, now entrusted to two political blocks: liberals and conservatives.

Parliamentarism, which decayed in the 1920s due to a loss of prestige and to the economic recession that affected the country, derived quickly in a crisis of the political system as a whole. The exit was the promulgation of the 1925 Constitution that replaced the parliamentary regime with a presidencialist one, extending the mandate of the President of the Republic of five to six years and transforming the election into direct voting.

Its implementation was not easy: a military dictatorship headed by colonel Carlos Ibáñez del Campo and the later "Socialist Republic," constituted a period of interruption in the formation of the new political system. Nevertheless, from 1932 and during four decades, a representative democratic system of the great city masses began to take shape. Presidents Arturo Alessandri, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, Eduardo Frei Montalva and Salvador Allende are highlights of this period.

However, with the beginning of the 1960s, the national coexistence became polarized in a climate of confrontation that derived in the 1973 coup d'état. Thus a long military dictatorship prevailed, destined to refund the republic by means of the restoration of a new social order, economically liberal and politically authoritarian, as expressed in the 1980 Constitution. The defeat of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte in the 1988 plebiscite, gave way to a period of "transition to democracy" headed by a center-left coalition that in successive governments — Patricio Aylwin, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle and Ricardo Lagos — have tried to do away with the image of the authoritarian governor and retake the path of the representative President of all Chileans.

Supreme Directors

Name Took Office Left Office Party
Bernardo O'Higgins Riquelme 1817 1823 Military
Ramón Freire Serrano 1823 1826 Lib.

Presidents of the Republic

Name Took Office Left Office Party
Manuel Blanco Encalada 1826 1826 provisional
Agustín Eyzaguirre Arechavala 1826 1827 acting
Ramón Freire Serrano 1827 1827 Lib.
Francisco Antonio Pinto Díaz 1827 1829 Lib.
Francisco Ramón Vicuña Larraín 1829 1829 acting
Francisco Ruiz-Tagle Portales 1830 1830 provisional
José Tomás Ovalle Bezanilla 1830 1831 Con. acting
Francisco Errázuriz Martínez 1831 1831 acting
José Joaquín Prieto Vial 1831 1841 Con.
Manuel Bulnes Prieto 1841 1851 Con.
Manuel Montt Torres 1851 1861 Con./PC
José Joaquín Pérez Mascayano 1861 1871 PC
Federico Errázuriz Zañartu 1871 1876 PL
Aníbal Pinto Garmendia 1876 1881 PL
Domingo Santa María González 1881 1886 PL
José Manuel Balmaceda Fernández 1886 1891 PL
Jorge Montt Álvarez 1891 1896 Military
Federico Errázuriz Echaurren 1896 1901 PL
Germán Riesco Errázuriz 1901 1906 AL
Pedro Montt Montt 1906 1910 PN
Elías Fernández Albano 1910 1910 PC ? acting
Emiliano Figueroa Larraín 1910 1910 PL acting
Ramón Barros Luco 1910 1915 AL
Juan Luis Sanfuentes Andonaegui 1915 1920 PLD
Arturo Alessandri Palma 1920 1925 PL
Luis Barros Borgoño 1925 1925 PL acting
Emiliano Figueroa Larraín 1925 1927 PL
Carlos Ibáñez del Campo 1927 1931 Military
Pedro Opazo Letelier 1931 1931 interim
Juan Esteban Montero Rodríguez 1931 1931 PR acting
Manuel Trucco 1931 1931 interim
Juan Esteban Montero Rodríguez 1931 1932 PR
Carlos Dávila Espinoza 1932 1932 PS provisional
Bartolomé Blanche Espejo 1932 1932 Military provisional
Abraham Oyanedel Urrutia 1932 1932 non-party; acting
Arturo Alessandri Palma 1932 1938 PL
Pedro Aguirre Cerda 1938 1941 FP
Jerónimo Méndez Arancibia 1941 1942 PR acting
Juan Antonio Ríos Morales 1942 1946 FP
Alfredo Duhalde Vásquez 1946 1946 FP acting
Gabriel González Videla 1946 1952 FP
Carlos Ibáñez del Campo 1952 1958 APL
Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez 1958 1964 PC
Eduardo Frei Montalva 1964 1970 PDC
Salvador Allende Gossens 1970 1973 UP (PS)
Augusto Pinochet Ugarte 1974 1990 military dictatorship
Patricio Aylwin Azócar 1990 1994 CPD (PDC)
Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle 1994 2000 CPD (PDC)
Ricardo Lagos Escobar 2000 present CPD (PS/PPD)

References

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