Student Protests Mark Low Point for Chile's Piñera

Last Thursday will likely be remembered as a low point for Chilean President Sebastián Piñera. Police clashed with students during an unauthorized protest, inviting unflattering, if exaggerated, comparisons to the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The same day, the Center for Public Studies -- known by its Spanish acronym, CEP -- released a poll finding that Piñera's popularity had dropped to just 26 percent, the lowest level of any Chilean president since the return to democracy in 1990.

The two events were hardly coincidental. Like his predecessor, former President Michelle Bachelet, who faced student protests of similar magnitude in 2006, education reform is turning out to be one of Piñera's most intractable political problems. ...