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Socialist leads in Chile poll
Michelle Bachelet, a socialist, leads Chile's presidential elections, but not by enough votes to avoid a run-off against a right-wing rival in January when she could become the country's first woman president.
With 82% of the votes counted after the poll on Sunday, Bachelet had 45.8% and Sebastian Pinera, a billionaire opposition candidate from the moderate wing of Chile's conservatives, was second with 25%.
Joaquin Lavin, another candidate from Chile's divided conservatives who have been out of power since Augusto Pinochet's 17-year dictatorship ended in 1990, ceded the election and said he would back Pinera in the second round.
"The people have spoken. That's democracy," said Lavin, who had about 23% of the vote.
If elected, Bachelet, a separated mother of three who was tortured under Pinochet, would extend the 15-year rule of a centre-left coalition that has cut poverty by half and overseen the country's transformation into the region's star economy.
Bachelet, a doctor and former defence minister, has pledged to overhaul Chile's private pension system and continue the liberal social programmes and free-market economic policies of Ricardo Lagos, the president.
Machismo
Support for an agnostic, separated woman like Bachelet shows a marked shift in values in this the conservative, Roman Catholic country of 16 million people where divorce was legalised only last year and where machismo, or male chauvinism, is strong.
But Patricio Navia, a political scientist, said that Bachelet would have a tough fight in January.
"This is not good news for Bachelet," he said, noting that the combined total of votes for the two right-wing candidates exceeded those for Bachelet.
Other analysts have said that not all of Lavin's supporters could be counted on to vote for Pinera in a second round.
Even so, Bachelet's centre-left bloc was also seen taking firm control of both houses of Congress in parliamentary elections that also took place on Sunday.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/687C2FF4-0BD3-4E28-8089-16F6F72C162A.htm
Joaquin Lavin, another candidate from Chile's divided conservatives who have been out of power since Augusto Pinochet's 17-year dictatorship ended in 1990, ceded the election and said he would back Pinera in the second round.
"The people have spoken. That's democracy," said Lavin, who had about 23% of the vote.
If elected, Bachelet, a separated mother of three who was tortured under Pinochet, would extend the 15-year rule of a centre-left coalition that has cut poverty by half and overseen the country's transformation into the region's star economy.
Bachelet, a doctor and former defence minister, has pledged to overhaul Chile's private pension system and continue the liberal social programmes and free-market economic policies of Ricardo Lagos, the president.
Machismo
Support for an agnostic, separated woman like Bachelet shows a marked shift in values in this the conservative, Roman Catholic country of 16 million people where divorce was legalised only last year and where machismo, or male chauvinism, is strong.
But Patricio Navia, a political scientist, said that Bachelet would have a tough fight in January.
"This is not good news for Bachelet," he said, noting that the combined total of votes for the two right-wing candidates exceeded those for Bachelet.
Other analysts have said that not all of Lavin's supporters could be counted on to vote for Pinera in a second round.
Even so, Bachelet's centre-left bloc was also seen taking firm control of both houses of Congress in parliamentary elections that also took place on Sunday.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/687C2FF4-0BD3-4E28-8089-16F6F72C162A.htm
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Ms Bachelet is a Socialist and former pediatrician who has served as minister of health and of defence. She was a staggering 21 points ahead before yesterday's presidential election. As polling ended last night, the most likely scenario was that she might fall just short of the simple majority - one vote more than 50 per cent - needed to claim outright victory today.
But, if that is the case, she is considered a shoo-in in a 15 January run-off against the second-placed candidate, certain to be one of the two conservatives, billionaire businessman Sebastián Piñera or the former mayor of Santiago, Joaquín Lavín.
Ms Bachelet has taken traditionally macho Chile by storm during her campaign, which ended in tragedy last week when four of her supporters died in a campaign bus crash. She called off her closing rally.
Commenting on traditional Chilean Catholicism and conservatism, she said in a recent interview: "As the old joke goes, I have all the sins together. I am a woman, Socialist, separated and agnostic." Joke or not, it seems to be working.
She had already become South America's first female defence minister in 2002 - putting her in charge of some of the men who may have ordered her torture or caused her father's death - a post she gave up last October to chase the title of president.
At midday on 10 January 1975, Michelle Bachelet, then a 23-year medical student, was having lunch with her archaeologist mother, Angela, in their Santiago flat when the door was battered open by hooded men. General Pinochet's dreaded secret police blindfolded the two women, took them to the Villa Grimaldi detention centre and tortured them for 21 days. Her father had already died in custody after torture.
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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article332446.ece