Sebastian Pinera, a billionaire with investments in Chile’s main airline, most popular soccer team and a leading TV channel, heads into Sunday’s presidential election with a good chance of returning the right wing to power for the first time since democracy was restored 19 years ago.
Opinion polls put Pinera far ahead of Eduardo Frei, a former president who represents the fraying center-left coalition that has governed Chile since General Augusto Pinochet ended his dictatorship. A victory by Pinera would mark a tilt to the right in a region dominated by leftist governments.
The 60-year-old businessman is expected to keep the fiscally prudent policies of the ruling coalition as he focuses on fighting corruption and bringing new faces to government.
Outgoing President Michelle Bachelet has sky-high 78 percent approval ratings, but the left couldn’t agree on fewer than three candidates, none of whom has close to her popularity. Pinera has also made a point of appealing to centrists.
“Pinera is the most moderate candidate that the right has ever had,” said Patricio Navia, a Chilean political analyst who teaches at New York University.
The elections are unlikely to produce radical changes in Chile, an economically stable copper producer.
“The big surprise of this election is that all the candidates are proposing very similar policies,” Navia said.
Pinera lost to Bachelet in 2006, but has topped all polls since beginning his third campaign for president last year. The latest survey, published on Wednesday, had him falling short of a first-round victory, with 44 percent of the vote to 31 percent for Frei.
Marco Enriquez-Ominami, a congressman who broke with the socialists after realizing that primary rules favored Frei, would get 18 percent and leftist Jorge Arrate would get 7 percent, a poll by the Center for the Study of Contemporary Reality showed. The poll had an error margin of plus or minus three percentage points.
Despite those numbers, trends suggest a first-round win for Pinera can’t be ruled out, center director Carlos Huneeus said, concluding that “the right is in a better position than ever” to reach the presidency.
It remains to be seen whether Chile’s leftist coalition could regroup ahead of a second-round vote on Jan. 17, but polls indicate Pinera would win then as well — with 49 percent to 32 percent for Frei, and a slightly tighter margin of 47 percent to 35 percent against Enriquez-Ominami.
The center polled 1,200 people nationwide between Nov. 24 and last Saturday.
“We are going to win by a wide margin,” Pinera predicted as he prepared for a campaign-closing rally in the capital yesterday.
The other three candidates planned to close their campaigns elsewhere in Chile. Arrate proposed last month that the three leftists form a common front to defeat Pinera in the second round, but the others were cool to the idea.
Chile has never elected a billionaire before.
While the extent of his wealth has not been made public, Forbes magazine ranks Pinera at No. 701 on its world’s richest list, with US$1 billion. While he has put some US$500 million in Chilean investments in blind trusts, he still has many more investments outside the country.
Pinera is running for the Alliance for Change, comprised of the far-right Independent Democratic Union and the right-wing National Renovation party, which provided a sheen of democracy for Pinochet during the final decade of his dictatorship.
Shamans in Peru on Monday gathered for an annual New Year’s ritual where they made predictions for the year to come, including illness for US President Donald Trump and the downfall of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. “The United States should prepare itself because Donald Trump will fall seriously ill,” Juan de Dios Garcia proclaimed as he gathered with other shamans on a beach in southern Lima, dressed in traditional Andean ponchos and headdresses, and sprinkling flowers on the sand. The shamans carried large posters of world leaders, over which they crossed swords and burned incense, some of which they stomped on. In this
The death of a former head of China’s one-child policy has been met not by tributes, but by castigation of the abandoned policy on social media this week. State media praised Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), former head of China’s National Family Planning Commission from 1988 to 1998, as “an outstanding leader” in her work related to women and children. The reaction on Chinese social media to Peng’s death in Beijing on Sunday, just shy of her 96th birthday, was less positive. “Those children who were lost, naked, are waiting for you over there” in the afterlife, one person posted on China’s Sina Weibo platform. China’s
‘NO COUNTRY BUMPKIN’: The judge rejected arguments that former prime minister Najib Razak was an unwitting victim, saying Najib took steps to protect his position Imprisoned former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak was yesterday convicted, following a corruption trial tied to multibillion-dollar looting of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state investment fund. The nation’s high court found Najib, 72, guilty on four counts of abuse of power and 21 charges of money laundering related to more than US$700 million channeled into his personal bank accounts from the 1MDB fund. Najib denied any wrongdoing, and maintained the funds were a political donation from Saudi Arabia and that he had been misled by rogue financiers led by businessman Low Taek Jho. Low, thought to be the scandal’s mastermind, remains
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday announced plans for a national bravery award to recognize civilians and first responders who confronted “the worst of evil” during an anti-Semitic terror attack that left 15 dead and has cast a heavy shadow over the nation’s holiday season. Albanese said he plans to establish a special honors system for those who placed themselves in harm’s way to help during the attack on a beachside Hanukkah celebration, like Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Syrian-Australian Muslim who disarmed one of the assailants before being wounded himself. Sajid Akram, who was killed by police during the Dec. 14 attack, and
RSS