Former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet is to face off against former Chilean economy minister Pablo Longueira in November’s election, after Chileans chose the two candidates in the country’s first ever presidential primary on Sunday.
Bachelet won 73 percent of the votes and will lead the center-left New Majority coalition. She is the daughter of a general tortured to death for opposing former dictator General Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military coup. Bachelet herself was arrested, along with her mother.
Longueira, who was close to Pinochet, won 51 percent of the vote to lead the center-right Alliance for Chile bloc.
Bachelet, 61, spent the past two years heading the UN agency for women after ending her 2006-2010 presidency with high popularity ratings. She is the frontrunner in the Nov. 17 presidential election and vows to use a second term to fight Chile’s income inequality, change constitution, and reform taxes and education.
“Today’s triumph is not the victory of one person, but of millions of Chileans,” Bachelet said in a speech after the results were announced. “It’s a project where the voices of citizens are vital. It’s the triumph of the demand for education that is free, dignified and of quality for every child.”
Longueira, 55, is a civil engineer and one of the founding members of the conservative Independent Democratic Union that supported Pinochet’s dictatorship. He entered the presidential race two months ago when Laurence Golborne, a charismatic businessman, was forced out by a financial scandal.
“If in just two months we won the primaries, in five months we’ll win the presidential elections,” Longueira said.
He seeks to follow in Chilean President Sebastian Pinera’s footsteps. Pinera, a billionaire and former airline magnate, has overseen a period of high economic growth with low unemployment and inflation, but he has been troubled by widespread protests.
Chile, the world’s largest copper producer, is respected for its fast-growing economy, but it also has the worst inequality rate among the 34 countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS