Chile's billionaire candidate to face ex-president in run-off

    SANTIAGO, Dec. 13, 2009, (Xinhua) --

Chile's presidential candidate billionaire Sebastian Pinera led by a large margin in the presidential election on Sunday and will enter a run-off with his rival candidate ex-President Eduardo Frei.

    With over 60 percent of votes counted, Pinera garnered over 44 percent of the votes against 31 percent for the ruling coalition candidate Frei.

    As for the other two candidates, the incomplete counting showed that Marco Enriquez-Ominami Gumucio of Independent (Party) occupied the third place, gaining 19 percent to a leftist Communist-led bloc candidate Jorge Arrate's 6 percent.

    The Sunday voting also renewed 120 seats of the Chamber of Deputies and 20 out of 38 seats in the Senate.

    Under the Chile's constitution, the leading two candidates will go to a second election on Jan. 17 since Pinera failed to secure an outright win by gaining over 50 percent of the votes.

    After the release of the preliminary results of 60 percent of polling stations, some analysts predicted that the run-off would be a "very tight" competition, with possible swing of Enriquez-Ominami's supporters to the right and Arrate's back behind Frei.

    Pinera, who ranked No.701 on the Forbes magazine's annual listing of billionaires, pledged before the voting to boost the country's economic growth and create jobs by attracting foreign investment and promoting continuous rebound with the entrepreneurial spirit.

    The South American nation has been punched by downturns due to the global recession in the administration of the incumbent center-left president Michelle Bachelet, whose office period will end in March 2010.

    On the eve of the election, the opposition Coalition for Change's Pinera, who was defeated in 2006 presidential run-off by the incumbent, said that it would mark a shift to the right in a region dominated by leftist leaders in the past two decades if he could grab a victory at last.

    He noted that "this election pits the past against the future, stagnation against progress, division against unity."

    On the other side, Frei, whose administration lasted from 1994 through 2000, acclaimed his selling point by stressing stability and experience.

    He said after casting his ballots that the country did not want "leaps into unknown" and would not believe the power of the market and money should be preferred to a society.

Chile holds general elections

    SANTIAGO, Dec. 13, 2009 (Xinhua) --

Chileans cast ballots in election centers across the country on Sunday in the general elections to choose their president and members of the Congress.

    The general elections began on Sunday at 7 a.m. local time (1000 GMT) at the 34,348 voting centers across the countries, and more than 8.285 million Chileans vote to choose their president, 120 deputies and 18 of the 38 senators of the Congress.

    President Michelle Bachelet voted on Sunday at the east sector of Santiago. She arrived at the voting center about 10 a.m. local time (1300 GMT).

    After voting, Bachelet said that the elections were being held with "tranquillity and order."

    She said that all of those electoral processes in the election have been "examples of normality and transparency."

    Bachelet also said that since one of the candidates will get more than 50 percent of the votes, "we all know that there will be a second round," on Jan. 17, 2010.

Editor: Yan