Chile to vote for president, socialist tops polls

By Fiona Ortiz Wed Dec 7,12:36 PM ET

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - Chile will choose on Sunday between a candidate who could be the first woman president for Latin America's star economy, and two hopefuls from the right-wing that has been out of power since 1990.


Michelle Bachelet, who was imprisoned and tortured under the 1973-1990
Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, leads polls. But the Socialist Party candidate could fall short of 50 percent of votes and head to a January run-off that will likely be a tight race with one of the opposition candidates.

Polls show conservative former Santiago mayor Joaquin Lavin and the center-right candidate Sebastian Pinera, a former Senator and one of Chile's wealthiest men, are tied for second place and have enough support to force a second round.

"This election is not going to be resolved on Sunday. A second round is going to be necessary and no one knows which of the rightist candidates will pass to that round," said Andres Passicot, director of Gemines Consultores, business consulting, market study and polling firm.

Bachelet, former defense minister and doctor, has campaigned on continuing the free market economic policies and liberal social programs of popular President Ricardo Lagos, who cannot run for immediate re-election.

While her social policies are more liberal than Chile's conservative elite, business leaders trust Bachelet will stick to the ruling coalition's economic program including fiscal discipline and trade pacts with countries all over the world.

"We found no major fears about the eventual electoral outcome, as the main presidential hopefuls agree with the current macro-economic principles," wrote Credit Suisse First Boston economist Alonso Cervera in a report.

Cervera said that since Bachelet's support has slipped in recent opinion polls her win is no longer guaranteed.

Lavin, who almost won the presidency in a close race with Lagos six years ago, and Pinera, have both attacked the ruling coalition in weak spots such as rising crime and stubbornly high rates of unemployment.

BACHELET, MORE OF THE SAME

Under three center-left governments from a coalition that grew out of opposition to the Pinochet regime, Chile has prospered to the brink of becoming a developed nation.

Poverty in this long, thin South American country between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes, has been cut in half to 18 percent of the population, one of the lowest levels in the region.

Lagos is leaving with his approval rating at 60 percent, and with the economy booming thanks to record high prices for copper, the country's main export, and strong demand for other products such as wood pulp, wine, salmon and fertilizer.

In his last weeks in office, Lagos ran from one ribbon-cutting ceremony to another, inaugurating new highways, new prisons, and new subway lines that impress visitors with Chile's level of development.

Bachelet comes from the same group of center-leftists who have run the country since it returned to democracy when Pinochet stepped down in 1990.

She and her mother were briefly jailed and tortured after the 1973 military coup that launched Pinochet to power, then they lived in exile. Her father was a general who died in prison after being tortured.

If victorious, Bachelet would be the fourth elected woman leader in Latin America, after Nicaragua's Violeta Chamorro, Panama's Mireya Moscoso, and Guyana's Janet Jagan.

"Men don't need to get nervous," she told foreign correspondents recently. "I'm talking about equality of opportunities."

Chile's next president will take office in March and serve a four year term, after Congress reformed the Constitution this year and reduced the term from six years.