Asia-Pacific

Chile runoff pits ex-president against billionaire

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-12-14 16:31

SANTIAGO, Chile: Chile's presidential candidate billionaire Sebastian Pinera led by a large margin in the presidential election on Sunday and will enter a run-off with his rival candidate ex-President Eduardo Frei.

With over 60 percent of votes counted, Pinera garnered over 44 percent of the votes against 31 percent for the ruling coalition candidate Frei.

Chile runoff pits ex-president against billionaire
Chile's former President Ricardo Lagos speaks to reporters after meeting with government coalition presidential candidate Eduardo Frei at Frei's campaign headquarters during general elections in Santiago, Sunday, Dec. 13, 2009. [Agencies]

As for the other two candidates, the incomplete counting showed that Marco Enriquez-Ominami Gumucio of Independent occupied the third place, gaining 19 percent to a leftist Communist-led bloc candidate Jorge Arrate's 6 percent.

The Sunday voting also renewed 120 seats of the Chamber of Deputies and 20 out of 38 seats in the Senate.

Under the Chile's constitution, the leading two candidates will go to a second election on Jan. 17 since Pinera failed to secure an outright win by gaining over 50 percent of the votes.

After the release of the preliminary results of 60 percent of polling stations, some analysts predicted that the run-off would be a "very tight" competition, with possible swing of Enriquez-Ominami's supporters to the right and Arrate's back behind Frei.

Pinera, who ranked No.701 on the Forbes magazine's annual listing of billionaires, pledged before the voting to boost the country's economic growth and create jobs by attracting foreign investment and promoting continuous rebound with the entrepreneurial spirit.

The South American nation has been punched by downturns due to the global recession in the administration of the incumbent center-left president Michelle Bachelet, whose office period will end in March 2010.

On the eve of the election, the opposition Coalition for Change's Pinera, who was defeated in 2006 presidential run-off by the incumbent, said that it would mark a shift to the right in a region dominated by leftist leaders in the past two decades if he could grab a victory at last.

He noted that "this election pits the past against the future, stagnation against progress, division against unity."

On the other side, Frei, whose administration lasted from 1994 through 2000, acclaimed his selling point by stressing stability and experience.

He said after casting his ballots that the country did not want "leaps into unknown" and would not believe the power of the market and money should be preferred to a society.