Bachelet Administration
In 2006, the Concertación again won the presidential election: Michelle Bachelet, Chile's first woman president, beat Sebastián Piñera (Alliance for Chile), with more than 53% of the votes. Bachelet's first political crisis occurred with massive student protests, who were demanding free bus fare and the waiving of the university admissions test (PSU) fee, while the longer term demands included: the abolition of the Organic Constitutional Law on Teaching (LOCE), the end to municipalization of subsidized education, a reform to the Full-time School Day policy (JEC) and a quality education for all. The protests peaked on May 30, 2006 when 790,000 students adhered to strikes and marches throughout the country, becoming Chile's largest student demonstration of the past three decades, a sure sign of the progress of the Chilean transition to democracy.
The 2006–2007 Chilean corruption scandals are a series of events in which the Chilean governing Concertación has been under investigations of corruption.
In June 2007, General Raúl Iturriaga, the former deputy director of the DINA, condemned to a five year sentence for the abduction of Luis Dagoberto San Martin in 1974, rebelled from the Chilean justice and entered clandestinity. He was finally caught and detained in August 2007.
The CUT trade-union federation called for demonstrations in August 2007. These went on during the night, and at least 670 people were arrested (including journalists and a mayor, and 33 carabineros injured. The protest were aimed against Bachelet's government free market policies. The Socialist Senator Alejandro Navarro was injured by the police during the demonstrations, although it later emerged that he had hit and kicked police and is currently under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee. Senators from the opposition have requested that Navarro and other congressmen which participated in the protest be removed from Congress for violating the constitutional article which bans congressmen from participating demonstrations which "violate the peace".
According to the correspondent of the BBC, Horacio Brum, about three million workers, roughly half the workforce, earn the minimum wage of $260 (£130) a month. Arturo Martínez, general secretary of the CUT, requested explanations from the government, and accused it of having stirred up the tension. Politicians from the center-right Alianza and even from the governing center-left Concertación have in turn criticized the CUT for the violence of the protest.
The protests of September 11, 2007, were even more violent. One policeman and father of two, Cristián Vera, was shot and killed by one of the protesters. Both the center-right Alianza and the governing center-left Concertación decried the violence and the government introduced new measures to combact street gangs which it accused of exacerbating the violence. Then potential presidential candidate, now president, Sebastián Piñera criticized the participants of both protests for their use of guns and molotov cocktails, calling their actions "almost terrorist".
Read more about this topic: Chilean Transition To Democracy