Chile: Setback for Frei

Municipal elections ordinarily carry little political importance in Chile, but President Eduardo Frei chose to lift last week's to the status of a national plebiscite. "It will be an opportunity," he said, "for the nation to say whether it is with the opposition or with the President it elected to carry out institutional reforms." Chileans took the opportunity, all right, but the results were not what Frei and just about everyone else had expected. While each of Chile's six other parties made substantial gains at the polls, Frei's Christian Democrats lost ground.

Miscalculation has become a mark of the three-year...

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