Two Millionaires

Chileans who fail to vote are black-listed as civic-duty dodgers and have to pay a 100-peso ($5) fine. Consequently, last week most of them turned out to vote in a typical South American election which picked a successor to stern, small-eyed President Arturo Alessandri Rodriguez, forbidden by law to succeed himself.

There were two candidates. Both were millionaires, both were machine-backed professional politicians who have long aspired to the presidency. Smallish but strongly built Candidate Gustavo Ross, who made his millions as a stockmarket operator and now annoys Chileans by keeping most of his money safely abroad, was supported by the Liberal, Conservative and Agrarian parties. His potent backers were Chile's hacendados, the Agrarians. whose previous man had been President Alessandri.

Some 41% ( of the Chilean people make their living off the land, yet 60% of the arable ground is owned by fewer than 600 families. To the hacendados (landowners), Chile's ruling class, Candidate Ross is "the ablest financier on the continent" because, as Finance Minister under President Alessandri, he was able to hoist Chile from the World Depression and a private slump of her own without further burdening the huge land holdings.

Candidate Pedro Aquirre Cedra, 59, leader of the Radical party (which, like the Radical Socialist group in France, is nearer centre than left) made his money as a lawyer and farmer. In the election he was backed by a Popular Front of Radical, Socialist and Communist Parties, the first in South America.

At the last moment Chile's ineffective Nacistas (Nazis), angered because their candidate was jailed as an "extremist'' after an abortive Nazi uprising month ago, spurned a logical tie-up with the rightist parties and threw in their lot with the Popular Front.

On election day thousands of impoverished, illiterate industrial workers and underpaid, overworked pampinos from the nitrate fields in the north, cast their ballots for Candidate Aquirre. Result was an upset to the hacendados, confident of victory. Aquirre defeated Ross by a narrow margin of 4,000 votes.

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