FOR THE first time since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship two decades ago, Chile looks set to elect a right-wing president and end 20 years of rule by the centre-left Concertación coalition.
Billionaire Sebastián Piñera is leading in all opinion polls ahead of a first round of voting tomorrow and though he is likely to face a runoff against his closest challenger he is favourite to win the presidency after a second round in January.
After a decade in which South America has been dominated by left-wing governments, such a victory would mark a significant achievement for the region’s right, though the television and airline magnate does not advocate any abrupt change in direction for what is one of South America’s most successful economies.
Should Mr Piñera (60) win, it would be the first time the Chilean right had succeeded in electing a president since 1958. His Alliance for Chile grouping was formed to support Augusto Pinochet, the hard-right nationalist army officer who seized power in a CIA-backed coup in 1973 and murdered over 3,000 political opponents.
Despite these human rights abuses, the former dictator remains a hero for many on Chile’s right, who long revered him for ejecting from power the world’s first democratically elected Marxist president, Salvador Allende.
But Pinochet’s death in 2006 and revelations that he had been involved in massive corruption have allowed Mr Piñera distance himself from the dictator’s legacy. Unlike in past campaigns the dead general’s image is not being used by the Alliance campaign.
“A Piñera victory would not signify a return to the dictatorship or a turn to the conservative right but instead the victory of a pragmatic and realistic right, like Merkel in Germany or Sarkozy in France. A Piñera victory would mark the consolidation of Chilean democracy,” says political analyst Guillermo Holzmann of the Institute of Public Affairs in Santiago.
But the shadow of Pinochet’s brutal rule still lingers over Chilean politics. On Monday a judge ruled that the father of Mr Piñera’s closest challenger, Eduardo Frei, had been murdered by Pinochet agents and ordered six arrests in the case.
Eduardo Frei snr was Allende’s predecessor as president and at the time of his death from a supposed stomach illness in 1982 was investigating human rights abuses. The judge investigating the case ruled that he was poisoned in order to silence him.
His son served as Concertación president from 1994 to 2000 and at 67 even many of the coalition’s supporters consider him an uninspiring choice, reinforcing a widespread sense that after two decades in power the coalition has run out of steam.
Despite strong backing from the current president, Michelle Bachelet, whose approval ratings near 80 per cent, Mr Frei has trailed Mr Piñera throughout the race and has had to fight off an unexpected challenge from an independent left-wing candidate, Marco Enriquez Ominami.
His father, leader of an underground resistance movement following the coup, was also killed by Pinochet’s agents, dying in a shoot-out when his son was just a year old.
Partly raised in exile in France and still just 36, the candidate known as MEO has split the Concentración vote by appealing to young voters tired of what he terms “the dinosaurs” who have ruled the country since the return of democracy. He has shaken up often stuffy Chilean politics by openly raising issues such as gay marriage, in what is still a conservative Catholic country that only legalised divorce in 2004.