Chile's presidential election

Right again

The centre right returns to power in Chile

SEBASTIÁN PIÑERA, a business tycoon representing a centre-right party, is the new president of Chile. In a run-off election on Sunday January 17th Mr Piñera won 51.6% of the vote. In defeating Eduardo Frei, candidate of the ruling centre-left Concertación coalition, he brings the right to power in Chile for the first time since the restoration of democracy after General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship of 1973-90 and heads the country’s first elected right-wing government since the late 1950s. He will take office in March and serve as president for four years.

Mr Piñera was able to reassure voters that the right, which is still tarred in the minds of many Chileans by its support for dictatorship, can now be trusted to govern. He is a moderate member of the opposition Alianza por Chile coalition and has close family ties to Mr Frei’s Christian Democracy Party. “This change of power represents the final completion of Chile’s transition back to democracy,” claimed a jubilant supporter.

But Mr Piñera’s margin of victory was narrow. And he polled only slightly more votes than the opposition candidate, Joaquín Lavín, managed in 2000. But this time the overall turnout was lower.

Yet it is a substantial achievement to beat one of the most successful coalitions in the recent history of Latin America. Concertación has presided over the consolidation of Chile’s democracy, a period of generally high economic growth and a sharp drop in poverty (although not income inequality). Concertación was weakened by infighting, however, as a new generation of leaders emerges. As a former president, Mr Frei was vulnerable to a charge of representing the past, whereas Mr Piñera promised “change, future and hope”.

The new president is unlikely to make radical changes. He has paid regular tribute to Concertación’s achievements and will represent “a change of pilot, not of course,” suggests Patricio Navia, a political analyst. Mr Piñera grandly told a 30,000-strong victory rally in Santiago, the capital, that he aspired to make Chile into the “best country in the world”. But his government is not expected to make big shifts in policy. It is not, for example, expected to roll back the social-welfare programmes that have been a central feature of the government of Michelle Bachelet, the outgoing president. Some polls suggest that her approval rating remains over 80% (Chilean law bars presidents from running for a second consecutive term).

Mr Piñera has ambitious plans for the economy. He has suggested that Chile will achieve average economic growth of 6% annually over his four-year term and that 1m jobs will be created. He will be helped to that end by the economy’s expected rebound from an estimated 1.7% contraction in 2009 and the cash accumulated by Ms Bachelet’s government in the years when the price of copper, the country’s main export, was running at record levels.

Greater government efficiency would also help. Mr Piñera wants to see “a state with more muscle and less fat”, but his ability to pass reforming legislation will be limited by a hung Congress, which was elected in December and is due to take office in March. And the new president’s plans to reform state education and sell a minority stake in Codelco, the state copper company, will face fierce opposition from strong unions representing teachers and mining workers.