Chile Race Reflects Latin America's Growing Preference for Free-Market Centrists

Juan Forero
The Washington Post
January 17, 2010

Whether a billionaire businessman or a former president wins Chile's presidential election Sunday, the outcome will reflect a broader trend in Latin America -- the rise of the pragmatic centrist.

After years of victories by leftist candidates, market-friendly moderates are gaining ground in the region.

Some are emerging from the right, such as Sebastian Piñera, 60, an airline magnate who has held a razor-thin lead in the polls ahead of Chile's runoff vote.

Political analysts say that Piñera and the ruling coalition candidate, Eduardo Frei, 67, who was president from 1994 to 2000, differ in style but not markedly in the substance of their proposals. Irrespective of whom voters choose, Chile is unlikely to veer from the centrist, free-market path that has brought the nation prosperity since the end of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in 1990.

Political analysts say the right is not making a comeback in Latin America, where a mix of leftist rabble-rousers and European-style socialists have taken power since a bombastic former army colonel, Hugo Chávez, won office in Venezuela in 1998 by pledging to overturn the old political order.

Instead, voters are showing a preference for moderates rather than firebrand nationalists who preach class warfare and state intervention in the economy, according to political analysts and recent polls.

"Voters are more calculating and rational than we give them credit for," said Christopher Sabatini, senior policy director at the Council of the Americas in New York. "People are making the choice to support market economies and rational leaders."

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