Chile’s right is closer than ever to returning to power in tomorrow’s presidential elections after 20 years of leftist governments since the end of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
Right-wing tycoon Sebastian Pinera is leading in the polls against former Chilean president Eduardo Frei, who is struggling in his bid to win in the second round of the elections.
Frei, 67, has waged an uphill battle for months to beat Pinera, closing the gap between them from 6.5 percentage points to less than 2 percentage points. He now has 49.1 percent support to 50.9 for Pinera, 60.
Pinera — the owner of one of Chile’s four TV networks and a major stakeholder in Latin America’s biggest airline LAN Chile and a football club — garnered 44 percent of the vote in the first round on Dec. 13, with Frei receiving just 29 percent.
Independent candidate Marco Enriquez-Ominami, who was third in the first round, gave another jolt to Frei’s campaign on Wednesday by throwing his support behind him. Enriquez-Ominami’s 20 percent of voters hold the key to the ballot.
If Pinera wins in a knockout round against Frei, it will spell the end of two decades of left-wing rule over one of South America’s most prosperous countries.
Since 1990, the end of Pinochet’s 17-year military dictatorship, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet’s Concertacion coalition has held power in Chile, the world’s top copper exporter.
She will complete her four-year term in March amid sky-high public support earned from policies to bridge Chile’s vast rich-poor divide and use of state savings from copper exports to mitigate the worst of the global economic crisis.
But the 58-year-old was barred from seeking re-election under the Constitution.
Pinera, a long-time rival of Bachelet, who beat him in a 2006 run-off to snatch the presidency, has sought to portray himself as a compassionate conservative ready to continue some of the outgoing president’s policies if he wins.
He has promised to strengthen the economy, while boosting employment.
The energetic sexagenarian, whom rivals have nicknamed the “Chilean Berlusconi,” has also presented himself as the face of change, denouncing the ruling coalition as “used” and “tired.”
Seeking to present a modern right cleansed of the stain of Pinochet’s 1973 to 1990 dictatorship and its 3,200 dead and “disappeared,” Pinera has also not ruled out including former officials of the military regime in his government.
Pinera’s right-wing alliance includes former Pinochet collaborators.
In a move that would have seemed impossible until recently, leftist intellectuals have thrown their support behind Pinera, decrying Concertacion’s “monopoly” and “moral superiority,” as famed writer Jorge Edwards put it.
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