Chilean Elections go to Second Round
Via the BBC: Chile election: Bachelet and Matthei go to second round
Left-wing candidate Michelle Bachelet has won the first round of voting in Chile’s presidential election.
But with most of the votes counted, Ms Bachelet has conceded that she has failed to reach an outright majority and avoid a run-off.
She took nearly 47% of the vote. Her main rival, Evelyn Matthei, who was a minister in the centre-right government of Sebastian Pinera, got 25%.
A second round of voting will take place on 15 December.
Full results can be found here.
Given the margins, the likely outcome of the second round is pretty clear.
The backgrounds of the top two voter-getters is quite the microcosm of Chile’s traumatic past:
Ms Bachelet and Ms Matthei are the daughters of air force generals, once friends, who found themselves on opposite sides of the political divide once Gen Pinochet came to power.
As children in the 1950s, they were neighbours and used to play together on the airbase where their fathers worked.
Under Gen Pinochet, Evelyn Matthei’s father, Fernando, rose up the ranks to run a military school.
Michelle Bachelet’s father, Alberto, who worked for the Socialist administration overthrown by General Pinochet, died of a heart attack in 1974.
An investigation concluded that the 51-year-old general probably died of heart problems aggravated by torture sessions at the military academy.
A judge ruled earlier this year that General Matthei had no knowledge or involvement in the torture.
His heart attacked that bullet with great abandon, literally swallowing it whole.
The BBC calls it “torture” while US news consumers have to make do with the phrases “enhanced interrogation sessions” or “harsh questioning”…..