Global General
Chile's Pinera takes nation on a right turn with runoff win
(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-20 09:21
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SANTIAGO: Billionaire Sebastian Pinera, who won a landmark victory in Sunday's presidential election, will become Chile's first strongly conservative leader since the end of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet two decades ago.
 Chilean president-elect Sebastian Pinera (center) rides his bike in Santiago on Monday. [Agencies] |
With most of the vote counted, Mr. Pinera had 51.6 percent compared to 48.3 percent for Eduardo Frei, an ex-president who was the candidate of the center-left Concertacion coalition that has governed Chile since 1990.
Many Chileans were willing to take the chance on change. "I'm voting for Pinera even though I've always voted left," said Jorge Ruiz, a Chilean local quoted by the Financial Times. "I think Pinera has a great opportunity to show the right has changed."
The Harvard-educated airline magnate will start his four-year term in March, taking over from President Michelle Bachelet, who is highly popular but prohibited by the constitution from serving back-to-back terms.
Riordan Roett, a Latin America scholar at Johns Hopkins University, told the Financial Times that the Pinera win marks "the arrival in power of the democratic right that has travelled a long road to mainstream politics."
Chile hadn't elected a conservative president in 52 years. Now, "the expectation is that continuity will be the operative word in Chilean politics," said Roett.
Pinera's victory marks a shift in recent elections in South America, a region dominated by leftist leaders from Venezuela to Brazil.
A Wall Street Journal analysis said Chileans, for the first time in the past two decades, have had a growing sense that life is no longer getting better. The economy shrank in 2009, its first recession in a decade.
Pinera, 60, has vowed to reverse that, saying he will be an "entrepreneurial president" with a business-like overhaul to boost efficiency, promising to create a million jobs and boost economic growth to average 6 percent a year.
But critics say Pinera's plan depends too heavily on both the private sector generating jobs and a steady global recovery maintaining copper demand. He could also struggle to push reforms through a divided Congress, though he has promised to form a national unity government.
"The problems we face in the future are great, the obstacles we face are very challenging and we need unity now more than ever," Pinera said on Sunday evening, standing next to Frei.
For years, Chile has been the region's poster child for success through openness, competition, sound money, limits to government and equality under the law.
But one of the challenges Pinera faces is the legacy of right-wing Latin American dictatorships in the 1970 and '80s, which remain a painful topic around Latin America.
After Pinera promised that no former Pinochet cabinet members would serve in his own cabinet, his conservative supporters pushed the center-right leader to take back his words.
"Having collaborated loyally and honestly with a government is not a sin or a crime," Pinera "clarified" later.
Andres Herrara, philosophy professor at Chile's Universidad de los Andes, wrote in The Santiago Times that if the transition is handled well, the center-right will be fully integrated in the current democratic system.
Pinera, a sports enthusiast who flies his own helicopter, has said he would make the public sector more efficient while stimulating private investment.
Pinera at a glance
Will succeed President Michelle Bachelet on March 11.
Born in December 1949 in Santiago. The billionaire businessman's holdings include the airline LAN Chile and the publisher Los Andes. Some holdings are in blind trusts; others he has pledged to sell.
Served as Chile's ambassador to Belgium and to the United Nations before entering the Senate from 1990 to 1998.
President of the National Renewal Party from 2001-2004.
Ran for president in 2005 as the National Renewal Party candidate.
AP-Reuters
