Sebastian Pinera winner of Chile's presidential election

[sandensea]

Sebastián Piñera won Chile’s presidency on Sunday, with his centre-left opponent Alejandro Guillier conceding the election as Chile followed other South American nations in a political turn to the right.

With 98.44% of the ballots counted, the billionaire conservative, 68, had won 54.57% in the runoff vote, to 45.43% for senator Guillier, a wider than expected margin in a race that pollsters had predicted would be tight.

Months of campaigning exposed deepening rifts among the country’s once bedrock centre left, an opening former president Piñera leveraged to rally more centrist voters around his proposals to cut corporate taxes, double economic growth and eliminate poverty in the world’s top copper producer.

In his concession speech at a hotel in downtown Santiago, Guillier called his loss a “harsh defeat” and urged his supporters to defend the progressive reforms of outgoing President Michelle Bachelet’s second term.

Many Chileans had viewed the election as a referendum on her policies, which focused on reducing inequality by making education more affordable and overhauling the tax code.

At: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/17/chileans-cast-their-ballot-in-decisive-presidential-runoff

[Judi Lynn]

1. Very curious about how this happened. There still is a fierce fascist group of former Pinochet fans.

They all turned out to make fools of themselves at Pinochet's funeral, didn't they? Jeez.

One guy went to the trouble of wearing a suit showing the U.S. American flag on it as he planted a big kiss on Pinochet's casket, which sported his silly uniform and saber.





Pinochet, standing up, greeting his pal, Henry Kissinger.

Who can forget the Colonia Dignidad, where Pinochet sent some of his political prisoners to be tortured, and Villa Baviera, founded by an ex-Nazi, populated and staffed by German immigrants?

Right-wingers still abound there. It would seem all these neo-Nazi, fascist fanatics, and the slime like Keoko Fujimori hold a lot of power and don't intend to let it go back to the moderates, or the progressives. There will have to be more struggle ahead. The good people will win, however.

Wasn't one term of Pinera enough? Good grief!

[sandensea]

2. Politics, as you know, seldom forgives mistakes - especially if you're not a corporate puppet.

Mrs. Bachelet was dogged through most of this second term by the Caval scandal, involving a land deal in which her son and daughter-in-law made a $5 million profit after receiving a loan - which they repaid - from the Vice Chairman of the Bank of Chile (the nation's largest).

She was also beset by sheer bad timing, taking office as she did just as the 2014 commodities bust was underway. Copper prices fell by a third, from $3/lb. to $2, as soon as she took office and didn't recover until this year.

Chile, you'll recall, earns 60% of its export earnings through copper.

In any case, Piñera is hardly Mr. Integrity. His Bank of Talca heist in 1982 (S&L-style sweetheart loans to friends and family that were never repaid) was the second-largest bank failure in Chile up to that point. But Piñera was given a pass by Pinochet's "zero-tolerance" prosecutors and ultimately of course went on to be president.

Still, Chile is lucky. The Macris made a lot more than that by using their dictatorship connecting to have the state write off a $128 million debt in 1982 - and then by raiding the Argentine Postal Service, defaulting on $900 million in debts in 2001 (owed to the gov't, the National Bank, and private banks) that they have still never repaid.

Macri, you may recall, tried to write the part owed to the gov't off back in February; the press, luckily, caught wind of it and the case went back to court instead - though it's still languishing there.

Let's hope Chile has better luck with Piñera - the "long-handed ladino," as they sometimes call him in Chile.