A BILLIONAIRE businessman won the first round of Chile’s presidential election on Sunday comfortably and is now clear favourite to clinch a run-off round next month, thus ending two decades of rule by a centre-left coalition.
Sebastián Piñera won 44 per cent of the vote, well clear of Eduardo Frei, the ruling Concertación alliance’s candidate who polled just 29.6 per cent despite heavy backing from the hugely popular incumbent, Michelle Bachelet.
“Today the Chilean people have distinguished us with a great victory and have pronounced overwhelmingly for change,” Mr Piñera told supporters at an ecstatic victory rally. The media and airline magnate is bidding to be the country’s first right-wing candidate to win a presidential election since 1958.
Mr Piñera and Mr Frei will face each other in a second round on January 17th. The key to their contest will be the destination of those who voted for Marco Enriquez Ominami, an independent left-wing candidate who won 20 percent of the vote.
Mr Frei has called on Enriquez Ominami to form a pact to prevent the return of Chile’s right wing to power for the first time since the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. A communist candidate who won 6 per cent of the vote has already endorsed Mr Frei for the second round.
But Enriquez Ominami (36), who ran against what he called the “dinosaurs” of the Concertación, has so far refused to back Mr Frei.
Polls show that about a third of his voters will back Mr Frei in the second round. But two-thirds will either abstain or back Piñera.
Analysts say his showing reflects a general feeling among voters that the Concertación has run out of steam after 20 years in power. At 67 and already having served a term as president in the 1990s, Mr Frei admitted during the campaign that he is not an inspirational candidate.
In his victory speech Mr Piñera complemented Mr Enriquez Ominami on his insurgent campaign and sought to identify with his supporters, saying: “We share with Marco and his supporters a diagnosis that the Concertación is spent, worn out and is crossed with corruption and incompetence.” Mr Piñera favours legislation to alter labour markets and partially privatise the state-run copper company Codelco, which is the biggest copper producer in the world. Proceeds from copper sales saved in two sovereign wealth funds have cushioned Chile from the worst of the global recession.
But the frontrunner does not advocate a major change in direction for what is, according to the UN, South America’s most developed society.