Sebastian Pinera, a billionaire with investments in Chile’s main airline, most popular football team and a leading TV channel, heads into today’s presidential election with a good chance of returning the right wing to power for the first time since democracy was restored 19 years ago.

Opinion polls put Mr Pinera, 60, well ahead of Eduardo Frei, a former president who represents the fraying centre-left coalition that has governed Chile since General Augusto Pinochet ended his dictatorship. A victory by Mr Pinera would mark a tilt to the right in a region dominated by leftist governments. Mr Pinera is expected to keep the fiscally prudent policies of the ruling coalition as he focuses on fighting corruption and bringing new faces to government.

The outgoing president, Michelle Bachelet, has a sky-high 78% approval rating, but the left couldn’t agree on fewer than three candidates, none of whom have close to her popularity. Mr Pinera also has made a point of appealing to centrists.

“Pinera is the most moderate candidate that the right has ever had,” said Patricio Navia, a Chilean political analyst who teaches at New York University. The elections are unlikely to produce radical changes in Chile, an economically stable copper producer, Mr Navia said. “The big surprise of this election is that all the candidates are proposing very similar policies.”

Mr Pinera lost to Ms Bachelet in 2006, but has topped all polls since beginning his third campaign for president last year. The latest survey, published Wednesday, had him falling short of a first-round victory, with 44% of the votes to 31% for Mr Frei.

Marco Enriquez-Ominami, a congressman who broke with the socialists after realising that primary rules favoured Mr Frei, would get 18% and leftist Jorge Arrate would get 7%, according to the poll by the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Reality. The poll had an error margin of plus or minus three percentage points.

Despite those numbers, trends suggest a first-round win for Mr Pinera can’t be ruled out, centre director Carlos Huneeus said, concluding that “the right is in a better position than ever” to reach the presidency.

It remains to be seen whether Chile’s leftist coalition could regroup ahead of a second-round vote on January 17, but polls indicate Mr Pinera would win then as well -- with 49% to 32% against Mr Frei, and a slightly tighter margin of 47% to 35% against Mr Enriquez-Ominami. The centre polled 1200 people nationwide between November 24 and December 5.

“We are going to win by a wide margin,” Mr Pinera predicted as he prepared for a campaign-closing rally in Santiago on Thursday. The other three candidates planned to close their campaigns elsewhere in the country.

Mr Arrate proposed last month that the three leftists form a common front to defeat Mr Pinera in the second round, but the others were cool to the idea.

Chile has never elected a billionaire before. While the extent of his wealth has not been made public, Forbes magazine ranks Mr Pinera at No. 701 on its world’s richest list, with $1 billion. And while he has put some $500 million in Chilean investments in blind trusts, he still has many more investments outside the country.

Mr Pinera is running for the Alliance for Change, comprised of the far-right Independent Democratic Union and the right-wing National Renovation party, which together provided a sheen of democracy for Gen Pinochet during the final decade of his 1973-90 military dictatorship.

Mr Pinera is atypical for Chile’s right because he voted in 1988 to end Gen Pinochet’s dictatorship -- a fact he often recalls on the campaign trail. But he has been widely supported by the military during his eight years as a senator, and a secret meeting he held with 1000 retired military figures generated controversy.

According to one of the group’s directors, he promised to end the “never-ending trials” over dictatorship-era crimes. Mr Pinera later denied making any promises of amnesty for about 750 military figures being processed for human rights violations.

 

 

 

‘In all they said, I sensed confidence in a Pinera victory’

 

Oscar Mendoza examines whether Chile is about to stop the tide of left-leaning governments in South America and veer to the right

 

 

Having recently returned to Scotland from my annual visit to Chile, I am more than ever convinced that the presidential elections being held today signal a major political crossroads in my native country.

At a dinner with former classmates from high school, the name of billionaire businessman Sebastian Pinera didn’t even come up in conversation. Mr Pinera is the presidential candidate for the right-wing Coalition for Change, made up of political parties whose leaders formed part of the military dictatorship between 1973 and 1990.

It was odd, considering that Mr Pinera, who also attended our school, is way ahead in every single opinion poll and the vast majority of those at the dinner supported him. The reason was simple: in everything my old friends said I could sense their confidence and hope in a Pinera victory. It was implicit.

At first glance, Mr Pinera’s runaway lead doesn’t make sense. The present incumbent, is Chile’s first woman president, Michelle Bachelet. She is a socialist and daughter of a constitutional Air Force general who died in prison following torture for remaining loyal to Salvador Allende, and is hugely popular, with approval ratings Gordon Brown or even Barack Obama would give their eye teeth for. But her popularity has not rubbed off on Eduardo Frei, a former president and official candidate for the ruling Concertación centre-left coalition.

Some on the left feel little warmth towards Mr Frei and may abstain, hoping a defeat for the Concertación brings about a re-alignment of the whole left behind a common platform, a cherished dream.

All of this means that for the first time since the return to democracy in 1990, General Pinochet’s political heirs see a real chance to wrest power from the hands of the Concertación. All predictions point to Mr Pinera and Mr Frei making the second round run-off in January, with the opposition leader tipped to win the decider handsomely.

In the meantime, Mr Pinera remains a highly controversial figure and his wealth and influence are seen by opponents as being potentially dangerous to Chilean democracy. Some describe him as the Chilean Berlusconi, owning a TV and media company, and being the largest shareholder in the national airline and most popular football club.

The recent resurfacing of claims he avoided prison for fraudulent activities under Gen Pinochet with the intervention of the dictatorship’s justice minister have had a negative impact on his image.

Nonetheless, with his football team, Colo Colo, winning its 29th league title on Wednesday evening, and the massive turnout of supporters at his final camapaign rally in Santiago the following night, the omens for Mr Pinera look good.

 

Oscar Mendoza is a social scientist now based in Scotland who was a political detainee in Chile from 1973-1975