CHILE: Conservative Presidential candidate Joaquin Lavin concedes election defeat and pledges to back his rightist competitor in January run-off against socialist front-runner Michelle Bachelet

Record ID: 367064

  • Title: CHILE: Conservative Presidential candidate Joaquin Lavin concedes election defeat and pledges to back his rightist competitor in January run-off against socialist front-runner Michelle Bachelet
  • Date: 12th December 2005
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) SEBASTIAN PIÑERA, RIGHT-WING PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, SAYING: "The Alliance is present here that is going to begin to change the history of the rest of the country. I want to thank from the depths of my soul my friend Joaquin Lavin."
  • Embargoed: 27th December 2005 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Chile
  • Country: Chile
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA64C7KXBDUJ8N3V5C7PYS067QY
  • Story Text: Chile's conservative presidential candidate Joaquin Lavin ceded defeat in elections on Sunday (December 11) and pledged to back his rightist competitor in a January run-off against socialist and front-runner Michelle Bachelet.
    With more than half of the votes counted, Lavin had only 23.32 percent support in the presidential elections, trailing billionaire Sebastian Pinera, who had 25.83 percent. Bachelet led the race with 45.68 percent.
    Lavin, an economist, member of the ultraconservative Catholic group Opus Dei, and former mayor of Santiago pledged to crack down on crime during his campaign. He had a tougher time winning support in this election than six years ago when he came very close to beating President Ricardo Lagos.
    Speaking to cheering supporters as he stepped out of the race, he vowed to continue working for Piñera in the run-up to the second round in January.
    "The people have spoken. That is democracy. I am going in a few minutes to congratulate Sebastian (Piñera), to express all my support and to tell him that I am ready to keep working with the same enthusiasm that I have done on my campaign so that Sebastian Piñera is the next President of Chile," he said.
    Lavin then went directly to Piñera's headquarters to personally congratulate the former senator. Billionaire Sebastian Pinera, one of Chile's wealthiest men, jumped into the presidential campaign in May and divided a rightist opposition that previously backed a sole candidate.
    A former senator, Pinera played to the centre and the results were clear when the tallies began to trickle through after polling centres closed on Sunday (December 11).
    The 56-year-old Pinera, worth an estimated $1.2 billion, says he represents a new right wing that is far removed from the stigma attached to the human rights abuses of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship from 1973-1990, a connection that Lavin has never been able to completely shake.
    Speaking to supporters at his campaign headquarters, he vowed to change the course of Chile's history. "The Alliance is present here that is going to begin to change the history of the rest of the country," he said.
    Meanwhile, supporters of socialist candidate Bachelet celebrated their candidate's win outside her campaign headquarters, dressed in carnival gear and dancing as they waited for their candidate to make her appearance.
    Bachelet bettered predictions in the elections, but still did not win over 50 percent of the vote. As a result, she will have to face Piñera in the January 15 run-off. But the government candidate said she was confident that she would win through to go on to govern Chile as its first ever woman president.
    "I have always been on the side of those who have less and those who are looking for a better standard of living. Of those who fought for democracy. That is why I am convinced that not even all the right-wing candidate's money will manage to bend the will of the majority on the night of January 15," she told her exuberant supporters.
    Bachelet's centre-left coalition has run Chile since democracy returned to Chile in 1990.
    Chile, a narrow country of 16 million people along South America's Pacific coast, is a regional model of political and economic stability, with impressive modern infrastructure, little corruption and one of the lowest poverty indices. A former defence and health minister, Bachelet was tortured during the country's military dictatorship, which also killed her father.
    If Bachelet becomes its next president, she'll be the second woman ever elected president in South America, after Guyana's Janet Jagan in 1997.
    Bachelet is a separated mother of three and her liberal social ideas at times clash with Chile's conservative elite, but she is also trusted to carry on the prudent economic policies of her mentor, the popular incumbent President Ricardo Lagos.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register