Chile vote highlights social divide
By: Jose Luis Varela
Voter intention surveys put Sebastian Pinera, a media magnate and big stakeholder in Chile's flagship LAN airline, and Eduardo Frei, a cold-fish politician who was head of state from 1994 to 2000, in a technical dead heat.
Pinera is credited with 50.9 percent of intended ballots, while Frei is projected to pick up 49.1 percent, according to the latest survey last Wednesday.
That slender difference is much less than the survey's margin of error, meaning the outcome of Sunday's poll is impossible to call.
The two are the only candidates left standing after a December 13 first-round vote knocked out other presidential hopefuls.
The confidence exuded by Pinera in that phase was backed by the 44 percent of the vote he received, much more than the 29 percent picked up by Frei.
That score led pundits to predict that Pinera, 60, was on track to end the two-decade grip on power enjoyed by the leftwing Concertacion ruling coalition ever since the exit of dictator General Augusto Pinochet.
But a redoubling of efforts by outgoing President Michelle Bachelet -- who constitutionally cannot stand for another term -- to pass on some of her skyhigh popularity to the hapless Frei, 67, appears to have paid dividends.
An endorsement in Frei's favor by an independent leftist defeated in the first round, former film director Marco Enriquez Ominami, also looks to have helped turn the tide.
"It's abusive what the government has done, to use and abuse public money, public institutions and even public employees. The interfering campaign it's done is not fair and is not clean," Pinera complained in a radio interview on Friday.
Pinera was especially nettled by a comment made by Bachelet on Thursday that she would vote for Frei because he was "honest."
The message Bachelet was pushing was clear: that Pinera's multiple business interests made him a less-than-ideal candidate to run Chile's vibrant economy.
Some analysts, though, believed Pinera's tycoon status could work as much for him as against him.
"For many people, this factor is not a handicap but rather an advantage. If Pinera is able to create wealth for himself, many think he can also do so for everybody," one political observer, Marta Lagos, said.
Pinera's ability to distance himself from the Pinochet regime, notably for having voted against a continuation of the dictatorship in 1989, also seemed to play well with the electorate.
Frei, in comparison, has gone forth in technocrat fashion, focusing his campaign on promising voters that social development programs established by Bachelet would be maintained.
"Each vote counts, each vote in each polling station will make the difference in this election," he said Friday, urging vigilance by ballot-box observers.
jlv/rmb/ao
http://www.laredosun.us/notas.asp?id=3020© 1994-2009 Agence France-Presse
Related
__._,_.___
