Mr Sebastian Pinera is poised to become the next president of Chile. Exciting? Maybe. Interesting? Definitely. If elected, he'll be the first non-socialist president since Pinochet. Wham.
Why is he likely to win? Word on the street is that the socialists are seen as "the man". They're corrupt, they're inbred, they're complacent... all the usual complaints that get leveled at parties that have been in power for too long. There's also a bit of a split on the left. Seems a young upstart,
Marco Enriquez-Iminami took some 20% of the vote away from the "primary" leftists candidate,
Eduardo Frei.
Here's the fun part. Marco Enriquez-Iminami is the son of
Miguel Enriquez, a founder of MIR, the political/guerilla group that stayed behind after the coup to fight Pinochet. Miguel was killed by DINA (the Chilean secret police) in 1974. Eduardo Frei is the son of
Eduardo Frei Montalva, who was president before Allende. (Hold your breath here and try and stay with me). Now when
Allende got elected, Eduardo Frei Montalva feared a communist dictatorship. He recommended that the armed forces stage a coup. Enter Pinochet. Not too long after, Frei decided the new fascist government was perhaps even worse than the commies. (Alright, you can exhale now.)
Back to the present (which, from the family histories of everyone involved, sounds like a tough thing to do in Chilean politics)... Who is this guy who's probably going to win the presidency?
Who is Pinera? Well, he's a billionaire - his money made largely by introducing credit cards into Chile during the 1970s. He owns an airline, a television station and a soccer team. He lost to Bachelet in the 2004 presidential election, 53% to 47%. And finally, just to throw everyone's family into the political heap, Pinera's brother,
Jose, was the secretary of labor under Pinochet. To his credit, Jose was mostly involved in structural reforms of the government and is credited as being the most important figure in the modern world when it comes to pension fund.
Follow all those links and I owe you a lollipop.
Remember in middle school when that one kid told you that Coca-Cola had cocaine in it? Okay. Well that's actually true. For a brief time there was cocaine in Coke... briefly.
