ANALYSIS: Quakes shake Chilean land and politics alike

Mar 5, 2010, 20:11 GMT

   Santiago - Last week's devastating quake and the scores of aftershocks including strong ones on Friday left visible cracks not only on buildings across Chile but also in Chilean institutions.

In particular, the popularity of President Michelle Bachelet, which stood at 80 per cent before the disaster, has taken a serious blow.

Criticism of the Bachelet government's reaction to the crisis is rife, and the events of recent days may have jeopardized the outgoing president's stated intent to return to power in 2014. She is to leave the presidential palace next Thursday.

Furthermore, the public has been left in the dark about the death toll, after first hearing the government say 803 people had died, then learning the toll was suddenly lowered to 279 bodies that had been found.

Bachelet herself has admitted that her cabinet made mistakes, most conspicuously when they said that there was no risk of a tsunami in the wake of Saturday's quake, which measured 8.8 on the Richter scale. In fact, a tsunami ravaged coastal areas in much of Chile soon after the quake.

As a result of this, the Bachelet government sacked Friday the director of the country's Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service, commander Mariano Rojas.

The Chilean Armed Forces, which took two days to mobilize 10,000 men to the areas worst-affected by the disaster, have also been the target of strong criticism, including from retired generals.

   Former Army commander Juan Emilio Cheyre, currently an academic, said military authorities should have been able to mobilize at least 7,000 men within only a few hours, as he could have done when he was in charge of the force.

   'My government will do all that is within its reach to facilitate the installation of new authorities, because the whole of Chile thinks it is time for unity,' Bachelet said Friday, after a meeting with president-elect Sebastian Pinera.

Bachelet herself took six hours to travel to the area ravaged by the quake and tsunami, due to alleged operational problems from the military.

Since then, she has been keen to direct the attention of the public to the reconstruction efforts. Pinera himself criticized the government, although he later toned down his complaints and also focused on the need for reconstruction.

The task at hand is huge. Two million homes are believed to have been damaged in the disaster, a quarter of them seriously. Bridges collapsed, stretches of road were destroyed and several public buildings, including hospitals, were made useless.

'We are getting ready for the great task of reconstructing what that quake and tsunami destroyed,' Pinera said Friday.

Still, the conservative businessman stressed that he will carry out profound reform of Chile's warning- and aid-distribution systems, in light of what he perceives as a slow reaction to the disaster.

Chile, a country that is used to earthquakes, had managed to react well to other challenges that nature put in its path, including the evacuation of thousands of people in 2008 due to the eruption of a volcano, which claimed no lives.

This time around, however, everything changed. The Navy was still saying there would be no tsunami by the time huge waves were devastating coastal towns. The Army took three days to put a brake on mass looting, and the government took four days to get food to some villages.

The crisis exposed Bachelet's capacity for leadership in major emergencies, which the opposition had already been questioning before the quake.

Mayors, anonymous individuals and the media alike demanded a determined government reaction to the disaster days before it materialized.

'If it is necessary for me to go down on my knees, I'll do it,' said Concepcion Mayor Jacqueline Van Rysselberghe.

The truth is the situation was chaotic. For days, hundreds of stores were looted simultaneously, police were visibly overwhelmed and there were clashes between civilians over property. Ironically, Chile was until this week a model of almost boring stability for many in Latin America.

Only time will tell just how of this much voters are willing to forgive Bachelet for and how Chile's Armed Forces - strengthened at the cost of billions of dollars of public money in recent years - and other institutions are to change as a result of this disaster, in which almost no one delivered what was expected of them when push came to shove.