The 1906 Chilean parliamentary election was held on 4 March 1906 to elect all 94 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 13 members of the Senate. It took place in the last months of the presidency of Germán Riesco, during the parliamentary period in which Congress held considerable power over cabinets and politics was organized around two shifting party combinations, the Liberal Alliance and the Coalition. The campaign unfolded against a background of labor unrest and growing concern over the "social question", although the parties addressed it only tentatively in their programs. The government did not intervene in the voting, but the election was marked by extensive vote-buying.
The Liberal Alliance won a majority in the Chamber, holding 53 of the 94 seats against the Coalition's 41, which reversed the balance of the previous legislative period. The Coalition remained far ahead in the Senate, holding 22 seats to the Alliance's 7. The election is also remembered for the case of Luis Emilio Recabarren, a typesetter and labor organizer of the Democratic Party. He was elected deputy for Antofagasta, Taltal and Tocopilla but was never seated. The Chamber, which judged the validity of its own members' elections, investigated the result, ordered a repeat vote, and in October 1906 recognized his Radical rival Daniel Alberto Espejo as the winner. On 25 June 1906, Pedro Montt won the presidency with Alliance support.
Background
Parliamentary politics After the 1891 Chilean Civil War, Chile was governed under a parliamentary practice grafted onto the Constitution of 1833. Congress could demand accounts from ministers through interpellations, which produced frequent cabinet turnover. Even so, the Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile (BCN) describes the system as notably stable, with power alternating between the Liberal Alliance and the Coalition.
Six parties were established in the early twentieth century: the Conservative, Liberal, National, Radical, Democratic and Liberal Democratic parties. They grouped into two combinations whose membership varied. The label "Liberal Alliance" was applied to any grouping that excluded the Conservatives and usually brought together Liberals, Radicals and Democrats. The Coalition always included the Conservatives and ordinarily the Liberal Democrats and Nationals. In 1906 the BCN describes the Alliance as comprising Radicals, Democrats and Liberals, and the Coalition as Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Nationals. The Alliance presented itself as the progressive force, committed to individual liberty and opposed to the influence of the Church. The Democratic Party's motives for joining it included both anticonservatism and anticlericalism and a practical need for allies to protect its seats when the Chamber qualified elections.
The two combinations had traded the presidency: the Coalition won in 1896 with Federico Errázuriz Echaurren, and the Alliance won in 1901 with Riesco. Pedro Montt had been the Coalition's unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1901. The historian Julio Heise argued that the doctrinal banners of the two combinations retained their full force until 1906, and that from then until about 1915 the centrist parties moved so freely between them that neither combination held together reliably. He credits Riesco with strict electoral neutrality in the general elections of 1903 and 1906, though he says some party leaders partly frustrated that effort.
The social question The 1906 election took place in a period of social crisis, and the parties incorporated measures to address it only weakly in their proposals. The first social laws had only recently been enacted: a law on seating for shop workers (1904), a law on workers' housing, promulgated on 20 February 1906, and a Sunday rest law (1907). These were widely regarded as insufficient for the needs of workers. Heise notes that strikes and other signs of unrest at the end of Riesco's administration also reached the political debate, raising questions such as control of paper-money issues, housing policy and tax reform.
Labor conflict was especially acute in the northern nitrate region. A general strike in Antofagasta in February 1906 ended in a shooting outside the Club Social Unión, shortly before the election. The Democratic Party was divided over its presidential strategy. According to historian Sebastián Jans, Recabarren favored a Democratic candidate of the party's own, while party leader Malaquías Concha backed the Coalition's Fernando Lazcano. In 1906 the split led to a division into "regulation" Democrats led by Concha and Artemio Gutiérrez and "doctrinaire" Democrats led by Ángel Guarello and Zenón Torrealba, who were joined by Recabarren.
Electoral system The election was held under the Constitution of 1833 as amended, and the electoral laws then in force. Since 1890 the 94 deputies had been elected from 30 groupings of departments. They served three-year terms and could be reelected without limit. The electoral reform of 1874 introduced cumulative voting for Chamber elections in order to give minorities representation, since the earlier full-list system had shut them out.
The 1833 Constitution had restricted the vote to literate men aged 25, or 21 if married, who met property or income requirements. The constitutional reform of 9 August 1888 lowered the age to 21 and removed the pecuniary requirements, and the 1890 electoral law ended presidential intervention in Chamber elections by placing their administration with boards of the largest taxpayers. Further reforms between 1890 and 1894 widened participation but did not end electoral bribery, which was now practiced by the parties themselves. A reform promulgated on 8 February 1906 regulated in detail the distribution of electoral materials, the forwarding of official records, and the work of the departmental and provincial scrutiny boards.
Senators were elected directly by province, a system adopted in the 1874 reforms and first used in 1876. Their terms had been shortened from nine years to six, and the Senate was partially renewed at each general election, so only 13 seats were contested in 1906.
Under the Constitution, each chamber judged the validity of the elections of its own members. A majority could therefore influence the Chamber's composition through the review of credentials. Heise argues that the purely political qualification of elections was more acute before 1891, and that a reaction began at the start of the twentieth century. Law 1,807, dated 8 February 1906, created a commission to review the credentials of deputies, the first step toward ending a qualification process decided on political grounds alone. A second such commission followed in 1914. Heise adds that until 1912 majorities in Congress commonly excluded legitimately elected candidates who represented the new working-class groups, citing Recabarren's exclusion in 1906 as an example.
Campaign According to Heise, the government kept out of the contest, and the irregularities that occurred came from the parties themselves. In his account, general elections that March involved reported spending of around six million pesos on buying voters. Prices per vote were unusually high compared with 1903, and a considerable number of voters abstained in order to demand more. The press of the day alleged that middle-class and even upper-class voters were selling their votes. In Rancagua, for example, a Liberal Democratic candidate circulated an appeal to voters in the commune of San Francisco de Mostazal, promising local public works. Heise also says the Liberals' quarrels and divisions in these elections were still remembered when the next general election took place in 1909.
Results The Liberal Alliance gained 15 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, going from 38 to 53, while the Coalition fell from 56 to 41. The result turned a Coalition majority in the previous legislative period into an Alliance majority. In the Senate the Coalition remained dominant: the Alliance's delegation fell from 9 to 7 senators and the Coalition's from 23 to 22. The BCN likewise describes the Coalition's victory in the Senate election as comfortable.
+ Seats held by the two combinations, by legislative period Legislative period Chamber of Deputies Senate Alliance Coalition Alliance Coalition 1903–06 38 56 9 23 1906–09 53 41 7 22 1909–12 52 43 17 15
Among the 94 deputies elected, 44 had been reelected from the previous Chamber and 50 were new to the seat. Seven of those 50 had served in earlier terms. Four deputies were elected to the Senate in the same election.
Dispute over the seat of Luis Emilio Recabarren Luis Emilio Recabarren was born in Valparaíso in 1876 and trained as a typesetter. He joined the Democratic Party in 1894 and became one of the principal organizers of the Chilean labor movement. In 1901 he founded the first workers' mancomunal society in Iquique, and he was imprisoned several times for his activism. In October 1905 the courts sentenced him to 541 days in prison for his leadership of the Tocopilla mancomunal and his writings in its newspaper. By 1905 he had settled in Antofagasta, where the Democratic Party proclaimed him a candidate for deputy.
In the election he was declared the winner for the constituency of Antofagasta, Taltal and Tocopilla, narrowly defeating the Radical candidate Daniel Alberto Espejo, according to Jans. The Chamber required members to swear an oath by God. At the session of 5 June 1906 Recabarren objected to this requirement. Jans reports that the Chamber's leadership rejected his request to use a different formula and that he then swore under compulsion while declaring that he did not believe in God or the Gospels, which drew harsh responses from several deputies. Jans argues that the attacks were a pretext aimed at the best-known labor representative, noting that another deputy, Bonifacio Veas, who was in the same position, was not criticized.
An accusation of electoral fraud followed, and the Chamber reviewed the constituency's result. On 20 June 1906 the Chamber fixed the count at 2,787 votes for Primitivo Líbano, 2,238 for Espejo and 2,047 for Recabarren, and Espejo was sworn in on the same day. A majority of the Chamber approved a repeat ("complementary") election in the constituency, which was held on 26 August 1906. Jans writes that Recabarren again won narrowly, and that Espejo filed new complaints, which the Chamber accepted.
On 26 October 1906 the Chamber voted 34 to 2, with three abstentions, for a resolution presented by deputy Enrique Rocuant. The resolution definitively recognized Espejo as deputy for Taltal and Tocopilla. It held that the 20 June count had been final. It also stated that, adding the votes from the repeat election, Espejo had 2,834 votes to Recabarren's 2,815, a margin of 19. It declared that even if the count were reopened Espejo would still lead, because the results in two polling sections of Tocopilla were annulled: it found that the tally sheet submitted to the Chamber credited Recabarren with more votes, and Espejo with fewer, than the registers showed (228 and 68 votes in the two sections). The resolution also noted that the repeat vote in Tocopilla was held without Espejo present, and that his supporters had protested that the polling boards were chosen three days before the vote instead of the ten days the law required.
+ Antofagasta, Taltal and Tocopilla: votes as recorded by the Chamber Candidate Chamber count,20 June 1906 Count including repeat election,26 August 1906 Primitivo Líbano 2,787 n/a Daniel Alberto Espejo 2,238 2,834 Luis Emilio Recabarren 2,047 2,815