MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chilean ruling coalition agrees on presidential candidate

Leader Eduardo Frei

Chile's Party for Democracy, or PPD, named former president and leader of the Christian Democrats Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle as presidential candidate for the December election.

Frei's nomination was made last weekend following the PPD national convention, where debate on the matter lasted all day and ended with an overwhelming vote in his favour. During the inaugural speech at the event, PPD leader Pepe Auth called on the attendees to support the campaign of Frei, who was Chile's president from 1994 to 2000, with the aim of defeating the leader of the conservative opposition, Sebastian Piñera. "Our people, the people who sympathize with us, who cry out to us to impede the right's victory, tell us that it's time to get behind the one who can lead us to triumph. Therefore, in the name of the national leadership I ask this meeting, after debating, to vote for Eduardo Frei to be the presidential standard-bearer of the PPD," Auth said. Frei said in his address that one of the central axes of his government will be the "deepening of democracy," adding that for that to occur the country needs a "new constitution for the Bicentennial, since the current one (promulgated by the late dictator General Augusto Pinochet) must be changed, because it lacks democratic legitimacy." "I want to invite you to join this initiative. We democrats cannot abandon (the task) of making this new constitution," Frei said. The coalition "Concertación" that has ruled Chile since the return of democracy in 1990 is made up of Christian Democrats, Socialists, PPD and smaller splinter groups. Having obtained the support from his party, the Socialists and now PPD has in fact become the presidential candidate for next December elections. In the last twenty years Chile has had four elected presidents: Patricio Aylwin (Christian Democrat); Eduardo Frei and Socialists Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet. Since the death of former dictator Augusto Pinochet the conservative parties have become more palatable to the Chilean electorate, which together with an exhausted ruling coalition and an interesting candidate (billionaire Sebastián Piñera) has a good chance of winning next December.