CHILE: Steering to the Right

• by Daniela Estrada (santiago)
• Tuesday, January 19, 2010
• Inter Press Service

The official results from 99.2 percent of the polling stations at 20:00 local time (23:00 GMT) showed 51.61 percent of the vote for 60-year-old Piñera of the Coalition for Change, against 48.38 percent for Senator Frei Ruiz-Tagle, a former Chilean president (1994-2000), standing for the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy.

This is the first time the right has won a national election since president Jorge Alessandri was elected in 1958. However, rightwing political sectors were active participants in the 1973-1990 dictatorship of the late general Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006).

Piñera's election to a four-year term as the 48th president of Chile ended the 20-year rule of the Coalition of Parties for Democracy (CPD), which has governed this South American country of 17 million people since democracy was restored in 1990.

The vote for a successor to current socialist President Michelle Bachelet Bachelet, who is constitutionally barred from re-election, was held on a hot but quiet day, with polling booths opening before 07:00 local time.

At 19:30 local time, with his supporters celebrating in the streets, Piñera asked President Bachelet, who telephoned to congratulate him, for her 'advice and help.'

Married to Cecilia Morel and a father of four, Piñera graduated in business administration from the Catholic University of Chile, and holds a master's and doctorate in economics from the University of Harvard in the United States.

He is the son of a well-known Christian Democratic diplomat, and lived with his parents in the United States and Belgium. He went into politics in 1989, when he was elected senator for eight years. He made his first bid for the presidency in 2006, but was defeated by Bachelet.

His electoral campaign was based on promises of higher economic growth, more efficiently designed and implemented public policies, the creation of 'one million new jobs' over his mandate, and a one-off payment in March for the most vulnerable families, worth 40,000 pesos (80 dollars).

He began to amass his personal fortune, estimated at over 1.2 billion dollars, in the 1980s under the dictatorship, mainly through speculative financial investments.

The Coalition for Change, which he heads, is made up of the National Renewal party (RN), the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) and other centre-right parties.

'After 20 years of government by the Coalition of Parties for Democracy, which did a relatively good job, it's good to let some fresh air into the country and give a rightwing government a chance,' 34-year-old microentrepreneur Alfredo Ortega, a Piñera supporter, told IPS.

Ortega said he believes the future Piñera government will bring greater economic growth, focusing on small and medium businesses, and 'greater national unity,' because in his view the president-elect represents a rightwing sector that has distanced itself from Pinochet's shadow.

'I have quite a negative perception of the military dictatorship, so I don't expect much good to come from a Piñera government,' 32-year-old dentist Aniza Silva, who voted for Frei, told IPS.

Silva is concerned about the kind of social and environmental policies Piñera may implement after he takes office on Mar. 11.

Flanked by two former CPD presidents, Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994) and Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006), a visibly moved Frei conceded defeat soon after 18:30 local time, before the later official counts were in.

'I hope that what will prevail (in the next administration) will be dialogue, the search for consensus, the social conquests and the freedoms that cost us so much to recover, and that have become a symbol of our relationship with the world,' said Frei, after congratulating the president-elect.

In the first round of the presidential election, held Dec. 13, Piñera picked up 44 percent of the vote, while Frei took 29 percent.

They were followed by independent candidate Marco Enríquez-Ominami, with 20 percent, and the leftwing Pacto Junto Podemos Más (Together We Can Do More) candidate, Jorge Arrate, with six percent.

Although a large proportion of voters for former socialist activists Enríquez-Ominami and Arrate backed Frei in the run-off election Sunday, enough voted for Piñera to secure his victory.

Piñera, who has been compared to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has come under criticism for alleged conflicts of interest in his dual role as politician and businessman.

In April 2009 he decided to voluntarily place his investments in a blind trust, as a sign of transparency. (Under a blind trust, a third party administers assets while the owner holds public office.)

However, he left three vital companies out of this arrangement: the flagship LAN airline, the popular Colo-Colo football club and the television channel Chilevisión.

His links with the dictatorship are another controversial issue.

Although he always kept his distance, and claims to have voted 'No' in the 1988 referendum which was designed to prolong the military regime, many of the present leaders of RN and UDI were active in the military government, giving rise to questions about the role they will play in his future administration.

President Bachelet is hugely popular, with an approval rating of an unprecedented 80 percent, but this did not secure the CPD a fifth consecutive presidential term.

The CPD is made up of the Socialist Party (PS), the Party For Democracy (PPD), the Radical Social Democratic Party (PRSD) and the Christian Democratic (DC) party.

Frei was unable to repeat his resounding victory of Dec. 11, 1993, when he was elected president for a six-year term with 57.9 percent of the vote, the largest majority Chile has ever seen.

He is the son of former Christian Democrat president Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970), who was poisoned to death in a clinic on Jan. 22, 1982 by agents of the Pinochet dictatorship, according to an ongoing judicial investigation.

In the past few weeks, the governing coalition candidate's campaign called on Chileans to 'No virar a la derecha' (No Right Turn), but it was no use.

Several leaders of the CPD, the most successful party coalition in Chilean history, said they would form a 'constructive' opposition during the Piñera administration, although some political scientists predict a new centre-left grouping will form in the future.

Former president Ricardo Lagos acknowledged the verdict of the people, who have apparently tired of some 'practices' of those in power, he said. It is time to give way to a new generation of politicians, he added.

The coalition that has governed Chile for 20 years can leave power with its head held high, because of everything it has built, Lagos said. 'We took over a country with a broken spirit, as (Cardinal) Raúl Silva Henríquez (1907-1999) said at the time, and 20 years later Chile has rediscovered its national soul,' he said emphatically.

Among the CPD's achievements is the reduction of poverty from 38 to 13 percent between 1990 and 2006. However, it has been criticised for its lack of renewal and internal democracy, recent incidents of corruption in which it has been implicated, and the stagnation of its progressive agenda.

On Monday Bachelet is to visit the president-elect at his home, as has been traditional since 1990.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service