THE head of Chile’s armed forces General Ricardo Martinez resigned on March 2 over corruption allegations. Three of his four predecessors in the post, the same held by General Pinochet when he overthrew elected president Salvador Allende, are caught up in the corruption scandal.

LET US look at some facts. All the commanders-in-chief of Chile’s armed forces from Augusto Pinochet until now, including Ricardo Martinez, have been prosecuted or indicted for crimes of embezzlement. Pinochet has also been prosecuted for crimes against humanity, and two commanders-in-chief — supporters of Salvador Allende — were assassinated on Pinochet’s orders: general Rene Schneider in 1970 in Santiago and general Carlos Prats in 1974 in Buenos Aires.

The status quo of military impunity undermines Chile’s democratic institutions, it is an affront to society as a whole and a discredits the army, which enjoys unprecedented institutional autonomy, discretion and arbitrariness in the conduct of its affairs.

The 1980 constitution that is currently being rewritten confers on the army a superiority of command over any civilian authority, both in times of peace and in times of war. Recently the three commanders-in-chief (army, air force and navy) had the gall to complain about the contents of a TV programme — a move unimaginable in any properly-functioning democracy.

More to the point, the armed forces have a discretion, bordering on arbitrariness, in the control of public resources. This scenario is the source of most of the ills Chile suffers today as a society.

I ask Carmen Hertz how consecutive governments allowed this deficit in legislation to happen.

“Well, there was never the political will to resolve these matters, by any the post-dictatorship governments so this institution remains as it is,” says Hertz.

“As far as fraud and financial crimes in the usage of public resources are concerned, the legislation available is full of loopholes allowing cover-ups, evasion and avoidance of oversight of how the armed forces use public resources they receive.

“All defence ministers of the post-dictatorship governments became spokespersons for the armed forces and never exercised any democratic, political control over the institution. Fraud on a massive scale was carried out in full view of said defence ministers.

“The military also enjoyed full autonomy over their intelligence operations. There’s so much that we have only now found out, such as spying on journalist Mauricio Weibel who was investigating fraud in the army. Furthermore, they lied about it to the minister of defence and the minister of justice who was fraudulently asked to authorise interception of telephone communications by a bogus ‘Peruvian agent’ when in fact it was Weibel’s telephone. These are the things that degrade democracy.”

After the putsch against the popularly elected Allende, the armed forces and the Carabineros (federal police force) assigned themselves a decisive role in the political process which continues to this very day. They do not subordinate themselves to the elected governments and they are a law unto themselves.

Pinochet had turned Chilean state-owned arms manufacturer (FAMAE) into his own private holding company through which millions were extracted from the public purse into the private pockets of the military elite, their accomplices, friends and relatives on an unimaginable scale in what is a monumental deficit in democratic control.

“We are talking here about massive ethical, professional and institutional transgression,” says Hertz.

The commanders-in-chief on trial, including general Martinez and their lawyers, are attempting to place themselves outside the law by questioning the competence of the military judicial system as they look for ways to avoid not only convictions, but even interrogation.

“What is happening now,” Hertz stresses, “is that the impunity they have enjoyed for decades is coming to an end, the lack of oversight is coming to an end, the fact that the defence ministers looked the other way is at an end.”

We ask about the tasks awaiting the incoming defence minister, Maya Fernandez [Socialist Party member]? “She faces an immense challenge,” Hertz says.

The great hope is the new constitution firmly and unequivocally establishes the subordination of the armed forces to civilian power. But Hertz sounds a dire and unexpected warning: “Unless the new constitution is adopted and then promulgated, I don’t think there is the political will to modify the present statute of the armed forces.”

“The armed forces reform has to be a root-and-branch one and involve every aspect of the institution: its curricula, its training, its public image, its organisational culture.

“The whole way the army functions within the state has to be changed. The constitution has to establish with utmost legal clarity, and in no uncertain terms, that it is the elected president of the republic who is its commander-in-chief and has maximum authority over its role and responsibilities in a democratic society. The armed forces must be stripped of any and all of the decision-making autonomy they have today.”

Carmen Hertz is member of Parliament for the 8th district of Santiago metropolitan region, an active legislator on abortion and human rights and member of the parliamentary committee of the Communist Party of Chile. Hugo Guzman is the editor of El Siglo, Chile’s communist newspaper.