Socialist-Christian Democratic coalition retains power in Chile

The essential political content of the election results, however, is that the Socialist Party-Christian Democratic coalition—known in Chile as the Concertación—which has exercised power in the interests of big business since 1990, will continue to hold the reins of state power.

There is no doubt that the so-called “social” issues featured prominently in the campaign, which saw the Chilean right’s candidate, billionaire businessman Sebastian Piñera, run on a “family values” platform, attempting to contrast his traditional marriage and supposed religious piety with Bachelet’s status as a single mother and her self-acknowledged agnosticism.

For its part, the Socialist Party modeled Bachelet’s campaign on those of British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, emphasizing her personal qualities, while saying little about political program.

In this, the second round of the election, Bachelet defeated Piñera with 53.5 percent of the vote to his 46.5 percent. The billionaire attempted to appeal both to the extreme right—vowing to put an end to prosecutions of military personnel accused of mass killings, assassinations and torture under the dictatorship—and to the Christian Democrats, describing himself as a “Christian humanist” and distancing himself from former dictator Augusto Pinochet. In the end, he proved unsuccessful in straddling these contradictory appeals.

For masses of working people in Chile, the right remains unalterably associated with the horrors inflicted upon the population during the 17 years of military dictatorship. In the more impoverished and working class areas, including the mining districts, Bachelet led by a significantly wider margin, while Piñera polled better in the wealthier districts of Santiago.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/chil-j17.shtml