SANTIAGO, (Reuters) – A conservative billionaire led Chile’s presidential vote by a wide margin yesterday, making him the favorite to win a run-off and oust the leftist bloc that has ruled for the two decades since Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Sebastian Pinera, a Harvard-educated businessman, was winning just over 44 percent of votes against 31 percent for ruling coalition candidate ex-President Eduardo Frei, an official vote count of about 60 percent of polling stations showed.
Pinera and Frei go to a second election on Jan. 17 since no one in the four-way race took more than 50 percent. Analysts say Pinera’s healthy lead in the first round puts him in a strong position to win in January.
A Pinera victory would mark a shift to the right in a region dominated by leftist leaders but he is not expected to overhaul economic policies that have made Chile a model of stability.
“This election pits the past against the future, stagnation against progress, division against unity,” Pinera told reporters on the eve of the vote.
The political right has not won an election for 50 years in Chile, a copper-, fruit- and salmon-exporting country of 16 million that stretches from a mine-rich desert in the north to the icy tip of South America.
Pinochet seized power in a 1973 coup and more than 3,000 people were killed or disappeared during his 17-year rule.
The leftist coalition that has run the country since Pinochet stepped down in 1990 has been credited with developing the region’s highest standard of living but it has been weakened in recent years by infighting and defections.
