Sebastian Pinera, a billionaire with investments in Chile’s main airline, most popular soccer team and a leading TV channel, heads into Sunday’s presidential election with a good chance of returning the right wing to power for the first time since democracy was restored 19 years ago.
Opinion polls put Pinera far ahead of Eduardo Frei, a former president who represents the fraying center-left coalition that has governed Chile since General Augusto Pinochet ended his dictatorship. A victory by Pinera would mark a tilt to the right in a region dominated by leftist governments.
The 60-year-old businessman is expected to keep the fiscally prudent policies of the ruling coalition as he focuses on fighting corruption and bringing new faces to government.
Outgoing President Michelle Bachelet has sky-high 78 percent approval ratings, but the left couldn’t agree on fewer than three candidates, none of whom has close to her popularity. Pinera has also made a point of appealing to centrists.
“Pinera is the most moderate candidate that the right has ever had,” said Patricio Navia, a Chilean political analyst who teaches at New York University.
The elections are unlikely to produce radical changes in Chile, an economically stable copper producer.
“The big surprise of this election is that all the candidates are proposing very similar policies,” Navia said.
Pinera lost to Bachelet in 2006, but has topped all polls since beginning his third campaign for president last year. The latest survey, published on Wednesday, had him falling short of a first-round victory, with 44 percent of the vote to 31 percent for Frei.
Marco Enriquez-Ominami, a congressman who broke with the socialists after realizing that primary rules favored Frei, would get 18 percent and leftist Jorge Arrate would get 7 percent, a poll by the Center for the Study of Contemporary Reality showed. The poll had an error margin of plus or minus three percentage points.
Despite those numbers, trends suggest a first-round win for Pinera can’t be ruled out, center director Carlos Huneeus said, concluding that “the right is in a better position than ever” to reach the presidency.
It remains to be seen whether Chile’s leftist coalition could regroup ahead of a second-round vote on Jan. 17, but polls indicate Pinera would win then as well — with 49 percent to 32 percent for Frei, and a slightly tighter margin of 47 percent to 35 percent against Enriquez-Ominami.
The center polled 1,200 people nationwide between Nov. 24 and last Saturday.
“We are going to win by a wide margin,” Pinera predicted as he prepared for a campaign-closing rally in the capital yesterday.
The other three candidates planned to close their campaigns elsewhere in Chile. Arrate proposed last month that the three leftists form a common front to defeat Pinera in the second round, but the others were cool to the idea.
Chile has never elected a billionaire before.
While the extent of his wealth has not been made public, Forbes magazine ranks Pinera at No. 701 on its world’s richest list, with US$1 billion. While he has put some US$500 million in Chilean investments in blind trusts, he still has many more investments outside the country.
Pinera is running for the Alliance for Change, comprised of the far-right Independent Democratic Union and the right-wing National Renovation party, which provided a sheen of democracy for Pinochet during the final decade of his dictatorship.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in