Former Chilean president Sebastian Pinera’s resounding victory in a presidential runoff election has swung Chile back to the right and highlights the increasing number of conservative leaders who have won power in Latin America.
With nearly all ballots counted, the billionaire on Sunday won 54.6 percent of the votes to 45.4 percent for former journalist and center-left Chilean Senator Alejandro Guillier.
Analysts had predicted a much closer contest, feeling Guillier had gained ground, although there had not been any opinion polls since the election’s first round in November.
Pinera, who ran on a platform of boosting sluggish economic growth in the world’s top copper producer, thanked his opponents and called for unity.
“Today the voice of all Chileans has been heard,” Pinera told supporters on Sunday night. “We welcome this triumph with humility and hope.”
The results prompted celebrations by Pinera’s supporters across the country of 17 million people. Some people waved flags and held banners, while others beeped car horns and yelled out the last name of the former airline magnate, who also was president between 2010 and 2014.
Pinera, 68, won last month’s first round, but fell far short of what polls had projected. Turnout had been expected to be low for the runoff, because in contrast to other regional countries, Chile made voting voluntary in 2012.
“Pinera managed to gather a big majority of the votes from center-left candidates” who lost the opening round, said Javier Sajuria, a lecturer in politics at Queen Mary, University of London. “What happened here is that Pinera managed to mobilize non-voters in a way that we haven’t seen since voluntary voting was started.”
Guillier, 64, received the support of incumbent Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and vowed to continue her plan to increase corporate taxes to partly finance an education overhaul, reform the Chilean constitution and improve the pension and health care system.
However, many Chileans have been disillusioned by lagging economic growth during Bachelet’s administration, a problem based largely on lower international prices for copper, which is the backbone of Chile’s economy.
Many also feel Bachelet wavered on her promises of profound social changes in labor and education, and the vote was largely seen as a referendum on her policies.
Pinera’s triumph underscored the fractures in Bachelet’s New Majority left-wing coalition and the rise of conservative leaders at the ballot box over the past few years in other countries in the region, including Argentina, Paraguay and Peru.
During his first term as president, Pinera struggled with large protests against Chile’s inequality and demands for education reform, and left office with low popularity ratings, but he also oversaw annual economic growth of about 5 percent a year.
He now proposes to slash taxes on business to revive growth and vows to launch a US$14 billion, four-year spending plan that includes fresh investments in infrastructure.
Over the past few weeks, Pinera compared Guillier to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. At first, that tactic seemed to backfire by rallying support for Guillier from hard-left factions that had been cool on him earlier.
“Fear can be tricky because it tends to demobilize voters,” Sajuria said. “But he managed it pretty well ... my impression is that people who were afraid of the outcome voted for him.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing
RSS