Chilean election offers the right its best chance to return to power since end of dictatorship

Can Chile’s fractured left beat a billionaire?

SANTIAGO, Chile — A billionaire who grew rich providing credit cards to Chileans strongly led in the polls before Sunday’s presidential vote, bringing the right wing closer to power than it has ever been since the dictatorship ended 19 years ago.

But an outright majority in a race including three leftists appeared just beyond the grasp of Sebastian Pinera, making a runoff likely. And that puts the key to victory in the hands of a rebellious young socialist whose followers are hungry for change: Marco Enriquez-Ominami.

Pinera, whose investments include Chile’s main airline, most popular football team and a leading TV channel, has been appealing to centrist voters and leading the polls since he began his third run at the presidency.

He expressed optimism as he voted Sunday, saying “better times are coming to Chile.”

Times are already relatively good, and none of the candidates come close having to the 78 percent popularity of outgoing Socialist President Michelle Bachelet. Even Pinera, in his closing campaign speech, conceded that her government has done very well.

A win by Pinera, 60, would restore the right to power for the first time since Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 dictatorship in a region now dominated by leftists.

But when Latin American leftists manage to present a unified front — as they have in Uruguay and Bolivia in the past two weeks — they usually have the numbers to defeat candidates whose core supporters are wealthy elites.

Whether that happens in Chile depends in large part on Enriquez-Ominami, 36, whose charisma and energy have fired up a new generation of voters turned off by traditional politicians.

A documentary filmmaker and congressman who was raised in Parisian exile after Pinochet’s military killed his communist father, Enriquez-Ominami has proposed reforms to make it easier for independent politicians to run for office, make the tax system more progressive and increase spending on education.

About 44 percent of likely voters favored Pinera in the last major poll published before the vote, compared to 31 percent for former President Eduardo Frei, 18 percent for independent Enriquez-Ominami and 7 percent for dissident Socialist Jorge Arrate. The survey by the Center for the Study of Contemporary Reality had an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

In a Jan. 17 runoff against Pinera, the left can win only if Frei captures most of the votes that would have gone to his leftist rivals. But while Arrate has pledged to support Frei in exchange for Communist Party seats in Congress, Enriquez-Ominami has shown little interest in a deal.

“I don’t come looking for a political appointment or some privileged position. I’m coming to change Chile,” he said after voting Sunday. “Winds of hope for a change in our future are blowing — it’s a dream for a more just nation.”

Chile’s strong economy, negligible inflation and stable democracy are the envy of Latin America. Booming revenues for copper exports and prudent fiscal policies have helped the government reduce poverty from 45 percent in 1990 to 13 percent today, boosting per capita income to $14,000 a year for the nation of 17 million.

But like Pinera, Enriquez-Ominami has tapped into strong sentiment that more can be done for Chileans.

“Chile has one of the world’s worst distributions of revenue and this cannot continue. More taxes on businesses, less taxes on individuals,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. He complained that the ruling coalition “represents a worn out group of politicians, from a tired past.”

Frei, himself the son of a Chilean president, already governed Chile from 1994 to 2000, and stability has been his selling point.

“We don’t want leaps into the unknown, nor do we want to return to the past. We want a government that worries about the people. We don’t believe that the power of the market and money should have priority over a society,” Frei said after voting.

Frei has swung to the left during this campaign, but at 67 he can’t help but represent the old guard.

So the big question is whether the desire for change among Enriquez-Ominami’s voters is so strong that they vote for Pinera, whose alliance of right-wing parties provided a show of democracy during the last decade of the dictatorship.

Pinera, ranked No. 701 with $1 billion on the Forbes magazine world’s richest list, is a Harvard University economist and the most moderate candidate Chile’s right has ever had. In 1988, he voted to end Pinochet’s dictatorship. But many leftists do not trust his assurances that he won’t roll back human rights trials that have only recently gained momentum, with about 750 former military figures being prosecuted.

Ricardo Israel, a political scientist at the University of Chile, figures leftists will back Frei against Pinera in January, and that the next president won’t bring major changes since all four candidates Sunday share a remarkable consensus about what Chile needs.

“Absolutely nothing will change … not in the economy, nor in social matters nor in the institutions of government,” Israel told the AP. “This has its good and bad aspects: the good part is that it shows stability, and the bad is that it shows a poverty of ideas and a lack of alternatives and debate.”