MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chile's presidential campaign takes off

Chile's December presidential campaign officially kicked Tuesday with five candidates running to succeed President Ricardo Lagos, four men and a woman. Opinion polls show the ruling coalition candidate very close to achieving the absolute majority in the first round thus avoiding a run off.

If that proves to be right, Chile for the first time ever will have a woman president, Michelle Bachelet, 54, a physician, former Defence and Public Health minister and the standard bearer for Concertación, the alliance of Christian Democrats, Socialists and a few other junior parties, that have ruled the country since the restoration of democracy in 1990 following 17 years of iron rule under dictator General Augusto Pinochet.

Chileans will be voting to fill 20 Senate seats and all 120 in the Lower House. Socialist Ms. Bachelet's main opponents are businessman Sebastian Piñera and former Santiago Mayor Joaquin Lavin, who forced President Lagos to a run off in the 1999 election.

Both are conservative but Piñera, --part owner of Lan Chile--, says he represents the non-authoritarian right, pointing to his record as an opponent of the 1973-1990 military dictatorship. Mr. Lavin's UDI party still has supporters of the former strongman.

Under the banner "Together we can do more," Chile's Communist and Humanist parties have joined forces behind candidate Tomas Hirsch, while Mapuche Indian leader Aucan Huilcaman is running on behalf of the Council of All the Lands, a group claiming to speak for the country's indigenous peoples.

However even when 440 candidates are seeking seats in Congress, Chile's "binominal" electoral system effectively excludes from contention all but the candidates of the majority coalitions that is the ruling Concertacion and the two large conservative parties Mr. Lavin's UDI and Piñera's RN.

Under the binominal scheme each district elects two legislators and for one party or coalition to sweep both seats it must obtain 66% of the ballot.

This legacy from the Pinochet years has enabled the conservative parties, and military sponsors, to control half the seats in Congress despite having a third of the votes. Plus the fact it has marginalized independents and traditional leftist votes.

Although attempts to reform the electoral system have derailed, on the bright side it can be said it has helped to create two major political forces in the Chilean electorate.

After fifteen years of Concertación and male politics, the irruption of Ms. Bachelet seems to have introduced fresh air to Chilean politics, and her gender and ministerial experience could well prove the winning trump in the first round.

Besides, with the Chilean economy ticking wonderfully and the country's main exports, copper, forestry, cellulose, fruit, fisheries, wines hitting record prices, the Lagos administration has been generously spending surplus resources in benefits for low income families, electricity and housing subsidies, freezing fuel prices until June 2006 and buying new military hardware for the three services.

Her credentials also help: she's the daughter of an Air Force Brigadier who was tortured to death for having opposed the September 11, 1973 coup that that signalled the start of the Pinochet regime.

Ms. Bachelet and mother Angela Jeria, an archaeologist, were likewise jailed and tortured in 1975 before being sent into exile. In 1979 she returned to Chile and became active in peaceful opposition to the military regime in the early eighties soon after completing her medical studies. In addition to Spanish, Michelle she's fluent in English, German, French and Portuguese.

Critics inside Concertacion claim that Ms. Bachelet was personally picked by President Lagos long time before the coalition's primary, and has since been "protected" by him which has limited her outside exposure.

This will be clearly tested if Ms Bachelet accepts debates with the two Conservative candidates, who nevertheless will be very limited in their presidential aspirations if they can't agree on a single ticket for the opposition.