Piñeragate
Piñeragate, also known as Kiotazo, was a political scandal in Chile that unfolded on August 23, 1992. It centered around the broadcast of a secretly recorded telephone conversation during a live program on Megavisión, a private television channel. The conversation involved Sebastián Piñera, then a senator and prospective candidate for the 1993 presidential election, conspiring against his political rival, deputy Evelyn Matthei.
Both Piñera and Matthei were prominent figures within the right-wing National Renewal party and competed for the presidential candidacy of the Union for Progress political coalition. The recording was aired during the political program A eso de..., hosted by businessman and Megavisión president Ricardo Claro, who played the recording using a Kioto brand cassette player. In the conversation, Piñera was heard requesting his associate Pedro Pablo Díaz to influence the moderators of the program in an attempt to discredit Matthei and impede her political advancement.
On November 7, 1992, Matthei publicly acknowledged that she was the source of the leak. She subsequently withdrew from the presidential race and resigned from the National Renewal party several months later. The incident led the party to select an alternative candidate for the 1993 election.
Despite the controversy, Piñera eventually became President of Chile, serving two non-consecutive terms from 2010 to 2014 and 2018 to 2022. Matthei remained active in Congress of Chile|Congress] and later ran as the coalition's presidential candidate in 2013. Both politicians maintained cordial relations, and Matthei later served as a minister in Piñera's first administration.
Public revelation
The recording was revealed on the live television program A eso de... on the private channel Megavisión by Ricardo Claro, the businessman and president of the broadcasting station. Claro played the recording via a Kioto brand cassette player, which is why the episode is also known as the Kiotazo.In the recording, Sebastián Piñera and his friend Diaz discussed how to trap Matthei in a television debate. They suggested bringing up the topic of divorce to make her feel uncomfortable due to her recognized conservatism and reveal certain contradictions of the candidate. For example, they aimed to demonstrate that Matthei professed Catholicism but did not practice it.
Piñera was invited to the debate program but was not on camera when the tape was played. He appeared after a commercial break, took responsibility for what was said in the context of a private conversation, and questioned the act of espionage.
Aftermath
The program A eso de... came to an end after the host, Jaime Celedón, and panelists Jorge Andrés Richards, Héctor Riesle, Pilar Molina, and Tomás Jocelyn-Holt resigned on camera on Sunday, August 30, 1992, following the scandal.Amid the ensuing controversy, journalist Santiago Pavlovic conducted an interview with an anonymous Army intelligence agent for TVN in September 1992, who confirmed that the Army was intercepting phone calls from members of political parties across the political spectrum.
In an interview with Raquel Correa that was published in El Mercurio on November 1, 1992, Sebastián Piñera confirmed that members of National Renewal had prior knowledge of the tape, thereby violating a party order that prohibited its members from discussing the episode.
On November 7 of that year, Evelyn Matthei broke her silence and took full responsibility for the episode, announcing her withdrawal from the presidential pre-candidacy. During the press conference, she claimed that the tape had been given to her by an "amateur radio operator" whom she did not know. However, a few days later, the Army released a statement saying that Captain Fernando Diez, a member of a telecommunications branch of the Armed Forces, had confessed to recording the tape and giving it to Matthei on his own initiative.
In 1993, Matthei left National Renewal and, in 1999, became a member of the Independent Democratic Union.
That same year, the retail chain Supertiendas ABC parodied the scandal in a commercial advertisement related to its Kioto brand radio recorders. In the ad, a customer, apparently a spy, enters an ABC store to buy a radio recorder and asks the salesman to be discreet, to which the salesman replies, "Could it be a Kioto radio" that the customer wanted to buy.
In 2001, Alberto Espina stated in an interview that it had been a mistake for National Renewal to let two of its presidential candidates directly confront each other, leading to the impasse.
Ultimately, as a result of the incident, National Renewal chose to go with a third candidate, independent lawyer and businessman Manuel Feliú.
Piñera went on to become President twice, serving from 2010 to 2014 and from 2018 to 2022. Meanwhile, Matthei stayed in Congress and later became the coalition's presidential candidate in 2013. They remained on good terms with each other, and Matthei even served as minister during Piñera's first presidency.