PAULINA ABRAMOVICH -
After four years of socialist rule, Chile is expected to revert to the right in elections on Sunday, with Sebastian Pinera set to return as president, confirming a shift to conservative leaders across Latin America.
Opinion polls make Pinera, a 67-year-old billionaire businessman sometimes referred to as “Chile’s Berlusconi”, the hot favourite to return to the presidency he occupied from 2010-2014.
The last comprehensive opinion poll of an uneventful election campaign, in late October, gave him a 34.5 per cent share of the vote in resource-rich Chile, one of Latin America’s strongest economies.
However, he is likely to fall short of the 50 per cent needed to avoid a run-off on December 17.
Socialist candidate Alejandro Guillier is his closest challenger, polling just 15.4 per cent.
“Pinera is benefiting from strong demand for change, evidenced in President Michelle Bachelet’s low approval ratings, while Guillier is conveying a message of continuity from the current administration. In addition, the centre-left is fragmented between six candidates,” said Maria Luisa Puig of market analysts Eurasia.
Bachelet has focused the latter half of her second term on a series of social reforms in the deeply conservative country.
But she has seen her support wane due to a downturn in the price of copper, which has contributed to sluggish economic growth, and a series of corruption scandals, including one involving her eldest son and her daughter-in-law.
Pinera grew his vast fortune, estimated by Forbes as $2.7 billion, from his founding of a credit card company in the mid-1970s, and interests in Chilean airline LAN and TV channel Chilevision.
His likely return comes when much of the region has reverted to conservative governments after periods of leftist rule.
Chile is set to be the latest domino to fall after electoral successes by Mauricio Macri in Argentina, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Peru and Brazil’s elevation of Michel Temer to replace impeached leftist Dilma Rousseff.
The election has failed to animate the electorate, though, partly as a result of a recent electoral law banning campaign adverts in the streets, and drastically limiting campaign spending, which has dampened voter enthusiasm.
“This election leaves me cold if I compare it to other times. There is little atmosphere, people are preoccupied with other things and so we did not see the same effervescence that we normally see in an election,” retired professor Marcos Davila said as he broke off from reading his newspaper on a Santiago street.
Experts predict that Sunday’s turnout could be as low as 40 per cent, making it one of the lowest on record.
“Turnout will be key for the electoral outcome, with Pinera potentially winning the election outright if turnout is very low given that his base of support is more likely to vote,” said Eurasia’s Puig.
“By the same token, higher than expected turnout from young leftist voters could make the second round much more competitive than recent polls show.”
In tandem with the presidential poll, the electorate of 14.3 million will vote in legislative elections, with half of the senate and the full lower house of congress being renewed.
However, analysts said it was unlikely Pinera’s centre-right coalition Chile Vamos (Chile Let’s Go) will win a majority.
That would mean he would have to negotiate with other parties to advance his business-friendly legislative programme, making it less likely his election would lead to a total U-turn from the Bachelet administration.
— AFP
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