Conservative billionaire businessman Piñera is elected president of Chile

Sebastian Piñera, a conservative billionaire businessman, won the presidency of Chile on Sunday, ending a generation of rule by a center-left coalition that had overseen the transformation of the country of 17 million into Latin America’s most politically stable and economically dynamic.

With nearly all the ballots counted, Piñera, 60, took nearly 52 percent of the vote. Eduardo Frei, 67, a former president and member of the ruling Concertacion coalition, won 48.3 percent.

President Michelle Bachelet placed a phone call to Piñera to congratulate him.

“The people today have elected you democratically,” she said in a conversation carried on Chilean media. “I hope that Chile can continue along the path of justice and social progress that we have followed during these 20 years.”

Political analysts say Piñera will stay on the same free-market course pursued by Concertacion leaders while maintaining popular social programs that have given Chile Latin America’s lowest poverty rate.

In a victory speech, Piñera said he is ready to work with the opposition.

“We will have a government of national unity that will build bridges and break down walls that divide,” he said. “We will have a government close to the people, well versed in their problems and committed to finding solutions.”

Still, in a country where the memory of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and his brutal military rule remains fresh for many, Piñera’s victory was seen as a shift to the right.

In recent days, Frei and his supporters had increasingly warned that a vote for Piñera was akin to supporting the Chilean right that had been a pillar during Pinochet’s 1973-to-1990 dictatorship. Last month, a judge determined that Frei’s father, Eduardo Frei Montalva, had been fatally poisoned by Pinochet’s henchmen in 1981.

Piñera was forced to admit that some supporters “committed errors” by overlooking crimes during the dictatorship. He pledged not to name former Pinochet-era officials to his cabinet, although some of his campaign aides held important posts in Pinochet’s government.

“One of the main reasons I opposed the military government was because I knew human rights were being violated,” Piñera said during a recent television debate with Frei, according to Reuters. “We won’t have ministers from the military government in our cabinet.”

Piñera is expected to maintain close ties with the United States, unlike the leaders of several other leftist governments in Latin America, notably in Bolivia, Nicaragua and oil-rich Venezuela.

Piñera has barely hidden his disdain for the region’s more left-leaning leaders. He told a group of foreign reporters last month that he admired leaders such as Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Peruvian President Alan Garcia, both market-friendly presidents.

Piñera said their model, as opposed to that of Venezuela, “is the best for Chile since it involves a working democracy, rule of law, freedom of expression, rotation in office and with no caudillos in the political scenario.”

Bolivia could prove to be a particularly nettlesome problem for Piñera. That neighboring, landlocked country, led by President Evo Morales, a close ally of Venezuelan firebrand Hugo Chavez, has been demanding access to the sea through Chile’s remote north, a region the Bolivians lost in a 19th-century war.

Domestic issues, though, drove Piñera’s slick campaign, which cast the airline and credit card magnate as the best caretaker for Chile’s commodities-driven economy. He has pledged to create 1 million jobs and better manage the government.

Piñera, who ranks No. 701 on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest people, faced serious challenges because the left-of-center Bachelet has an approval rating of about 80 percent. Her government has built or restored hundreds of thousands of homes and overseen a swift recovery in the wake of the world financial crisis.

But it became clear late last year that Bachelet’s magic had not rubbed off on Frei, who had left the presidency in 1990 with a 28 percent approval rating. During his six-year presidency, the economy flattened out and he clashed with both business leaders and the left.

In conceding defeat, Frei said that Chile today is “much better than the country we received in 1990” when Pinochet stepped aside. He pledged that the Concertacion coalition would fight to ensure that its accomplishments remain in place.

“Our ideals and our struggle for more social justice and equality will continue to be expressed in each corner of Chile,” Frei told his followers.