MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chilean opposition remains divided ahead of October municipal elections

President Piñera will be facing a splintered opposition

Chilean opposition registered its candidates at the Electoral Service for the coming municipal elections in October but was unable to reach an overall agreement to face the ruling conservative parties.

“Concertation”, a coalition of centre and left groupings that ruled Chile from 1990 to 2010 and the Communist party registered an only list of mayor candidates but a couple hours later another opposition grouping “Por un Chile justo” did the same with its own list of Council candidates.

Radical party Senator Jose Antonio Gomez admitted that with the opposition presenting different candidates “it is a problem” which will have an impact on the election and “weaken us against the right wing parties”.

To make things even more complicated, former presidential candidate and head of PRO Marco Enriquez-Ominami also registered over a thousand candidates for mayor and councillors at national level although admitting they would not dispute for a place in the Chilean capital of Santiago.

“We are proposing a new constitution, municipal governments fully committed to a policy of combating drugs, sustainable policies and furthermore no municipal government staff can make less that the ethical salary of 500 dollars”, said Enriquez-Ominami.

The young politician Enriquez-Ominami is blamed by the Conertacion for the victory of conservative Sebastian Piñera in the last presidential election when he ran with PRO dividing the centre and left groupings coalition.

Last weekend the ruling coalition made up of President Piñera Renovación Nacional (RN) and Union Democratica Independiente, UDI, registered at the electoral court an only list of 300 mayor candidates and 2.200 councillor hopefuls.

At the time Patricio Melero, UDI chairman pointed out to the solidness and union of the ruling coalition in clear reference to the problems and divisions faced by the opposition.

On his side RN chairman Carlos Larrain admitted that “there’s always some difficulties at the moment of agreeing on names, but we are committed to work for the candidate that is registered”.