Last night was the end of a long hot day for the presidential elections in Chile.  Our outgoing president, Democratic Socialist Michelle Bachelet, leaves office with a record 80% approval rate. The four candidates that presented themselves were either so indistinct or frighteningly wealthy right-wing, that most people I find had a tough time arriving at a decision of whom to cast their ballot for.

There was Jorge Arrate, an old member of the Communist party with a no-nonsense view on how to keep Chile’s natural resources from being exported and exploited by foreign corporations and investing in Chilean public education — a task about as prominent as health care in the United States right now.  But he only won 6% of the vote since he represents the hardline left.

Then there was Marco Enríquez-Ominami, aka MEO, an ex-member of the Socialist Party (the same party to which belongs the current president) who decided to go independent because the incumbent governing center left coalition, known as the Concertación, chose Eduardo Frei as their candidate.

Frei was president of Chile from 1994 to 2000 and left a lot of people unhappy with him, due to projects such as the privatization of water resources, a policy in direct opposition to how water is a public resource in most of the world.  Finally, the fourth candidate was Sebastian Piñera, a billionaire supporter of Chile’s military dictator Augusto Pinochet, staunch right-wing and someone who owns part of the country’s principal airline, LAN Chile, Colo Colo, Chile’s most popular soccer team as well as one of the top three television stations Chilevision.

Last night, despite Michelle Bachelet and her government’s record high approval rating, it seems people decided that Frei as a continuation of the Concertación wasn’t ideal.  Piñera barely missed a majority vote by obtaining 43% with Frei winning 29% of the votes.  MEO pulled in a surprising 20% and though many of his supporters may vote for Frei versus Piñera in the run-off election, there’s no guarantee they won’t vote for Piñera because of the latter’s charismatic rhetoric for change.

Working for my friend Hugo Infante’s AgenciaStock photo agency, I was assigned to cover Enríquez-Ominami’s camp as the voting ended and the final vote counts were officialized and announced. Although Piñera was leading in the opinion polls, it was also predicted that MEO would have quite a turnout, possibly edging out Frei for the run-offs.  In the end, MEO was short 10 percentage points of Frei but announced he would not request his followers to vote for either candidate, allowing them the freedom to choose.