By LARRY ROHTER
 
SANTIAGO, Chile - Gen. Augusto Pinochet, under investigation on corruption charges and increasingly feeble, is not much of a factor in Chilean politics these days. But it is only now, nearly 15 years after he was forced to leave power, that the authoritarian governing structure he left behind to hamstring his civilian successors is being dismantled.

Thanks to an agreement between the Socialist-led coalition now in office and the right-wing opposition, Chile's Congress is set to approve a constitutional reform plan that will expand civilian authority and reduce the military's ability to interfere in governing the country. The package also restores the president's power to fire military commanders and eliminates appointive Senate seats for former commanders.

"The political will existed, but we never had the votes in Congress to eliminate these authoritarian enclaves," Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza, the main architect of the reforms, said in an interview here. "But the moment has finally come in which a consensus has been forged to modify substantially all the decree powers that could infringe on the rights of persons and restrict public liberties."

[General Pinochet was hospitalized Saturday with a possible stroke, Reuters reported. The former Chilean dictator suffers from diabetes and has had a series of small strokes.]

The current Constitution, written by and for General Pinochet, dates from 1980, when it was approved in a plebiscite that human rights groups condemned as rigged. In an effort to maintain the military's primacy in the event of a return to civilian rule, it guaranteed an armed forces presence in Congress and placed roadblocks in the way of reforms by requiring majorities of up to two-thirds to amend the Constitution.

The charter also established a National Security Council that in theory could be convened and act without the president's consent, and granted the armed forces a sweeping arbiter's role as "guarantors of institutionality." That potentially intrusive authority would now be removed from the Constitution, and the powers of the National Security Council would be curtailed.

In addition, the reform package, which has already been approved by the Senate and is expected to pass in the lower house, demilitarizes the national police by transferring their control from the Defense Ministry to the Interior Ministry.

In his moves to weaken the ability of his civilian successors to undo his authoritarian system, General Pinochet also installed an unusual "binominal" electoral system that virtually guarantees minority overrepresentation in Congress. That system still remains in place, but under the reform package, it is to be removed from the Constitution and has been recast as an ordinary statute. But some analysts do not believe that the proposed reforms go far enough. Through the Pinochet electoral system, "the right still retains veto power," complained Felipe Portales, author of the book "Chile: A Democracy Under Tutelage" and a critic of the military. "The era of formal military tutelage may be ending, but much of the basic legislation the dictatorship left behind also remains in place, which makes it difficult to reform the labor, health, tax, social security and education codes."

Former President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, who had to govern for six years with his hands tied by the limits General Pinochet had imposed, has called for the Constitution to be junked altogether and wants a constitutional assembly to be convened to write a new charter, but that proposal has won little support.

"This Constitution is Pinochet's, and it still has a lot of features that haven't been touched and don't belong in a democratic constitution," said Carlos Huneeus, director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary Reality. "We need a constitutional architecture that has nothing to do with Pinochet, but calling a constitutional assembly would open a Pandora's box."