Chilean Presidential Candidates Face Runoff

In an extremely close presidential election marking a new era in Chilean politics, Socialist Ricardo Lagos and rightist Joaquin Lavin fought to a virtual draw Sunday night, setting up an unprecedented runoff election.

With 99.3% of the votes counted, Lagos had 47.96% to Lavin’s 47.52%. The remaining ballots went to four minor candidates or were cast as blank protest votes. Because no candidate garnered more than 50%, Lagos and Lavin will have to clash again Jan. 16 in Chile’s first runoff election, a contest in which Lagos, a former Cabinet minister, is considered the favorite.

The peaceful campaign culminating in the tightest election since the return of democracy in 1989 reflected a changing political map. Only a few years ago, the idea of a Socialist president raised fears here of a violent reaction by the military. Today, Chile has moved close to electing a president from the Socialist Party that last ruled 26 years ago, until President Salvador Allende died in a bloody military coup, becoming a worldwide symbol for leftists committed to gaining power by democratic means.

“We are going to win in the second round,” Lagos, 61, told followers at his campaign headquarters Sunday night. “I have understood the message that the people have delivered tonight. The second round is a tremendous opportunity for us to come together and make a better Chile.”

Lagos’ center-left coalition seems likely to win the runoff, political analysts say, because it stands to pick up the support of voters for Communist Party standard-bearer Gladys Marin, a fiery candidate who received about 3% of the vote, and two other candidates from small left-leaning parties.

Nonetheless, conservatives were elated by the performance of Lavin, by far the strongest right-wing candidate to have run in any of the three presidential elections of Chile’s restored democracy, beginning with the vote in December 1989 after which former dictator Augusto Pinochet stepped down. And the 46-year-old economist was conceding nothing Sunday night.

“I always trusted in change,” Lavin declared. “I am extraordinarily happy. On the 16th of January, I will be president of Chile.”

By giving Chilean conservatives a friendlier face, Lavin has established himself as a formidable contender. Capitalizing on a huge war chest and his success as mayor of a Santiago suburb, Lavin emphasized a populist message of change in a campaign featuring slick television commercials and catchy slogans. His promises to help the poor struck a chord with working-class Chileans upset about an economic recession that has pushed unemployment to 11%.

Moreover, Lavin broke ranks with unapologetic rightist die-hards on the issue of human rights, expressing approval for a recent wave of prosecutions of military officers here and distancing himself from Pinochet.

Lavin’s shift, combined with Lagos’ rise to dominance in the ruling coalition, hastened the political decline of Pinochet. The 84-year-old former dictator had little impact on the campaign because he has spent the past 14 months in custody in Britain facing an extradition request by a Spanish judge who wants to try him for crimes committed during his 17-year military regime.

Although Lavin faces an uphill battle, the Lagos campaign must recover from the psychological blow of watching a broad margin in opinion polls evaporate during the course of the race. And as Lagos reaches out to the voters on the left, he must guard his right flank: Lavin lieutenants asserted Sunday that their impressive performance was due partly to a defection of centrist Christian Democrats from the ruling coalition.

Both candidates will also target hundreds of thousands of Chileans who cast blank ballots or were registered but did not vote--signs of spreading disillusionment with the political establishment here. More than 7.2 million of Chile’s 15 million people were estimated to have voted Sunday.

As with the first round, the runoff is likely to center more on the candidates as individuals than on their platforms. Both leaders emphasize bread-and-butter issues: employment, crime, education. But their styles and backgrounds are enormously different.

Lagos is a lawyer and economist who has served as education and then public works minister for two successive Christian Democrat presidents. During the Allende government, Lagos was a university administrator and Allende’s nominee to serve as ambassador to the Soviet Union. The coup forced Lagos into exile in the United States, where he earned a doctorate at Duke University in North Carolina.

Upon returning to Chile, he became a leader of the anti-Pinochet forces, spending time in jail and founding the center-left coalition that led the transition from dictatorship to democracy.

Lagos is unapologetic about his past and his ideas; for example, he is a declared agnostic in a profoundly Roman Catholic society. But he has consolidated an image as a thoughtful social democrat, gaining the respect even of conservative foes in the military and business elites.

Lavin, by contrast, is a member of the conservative Opus Dei branch of Catholicism and a former newspaper editor. Building on his municipal experience, he emphasizes pragmatic solutions. Unlike the somber Lagos, he avoids suits and ties, projecting a youthful, down-to-earth image.

“Lavin has been clear, brief, concise. He understands people,” said political analyst Carlos Cruz. “Lagos is also a very qualified man. We have here two high-quality candidates.”

Sensing that Chileans are tired of rancor and division, both candidates have pulled their punches in the campaign until now and largely refrained from negative attacks on each other’s past. But things could get nastier if the second round turns out to be as close as the first.