Both of them women, which must be some kind of record for a Latin American country;
Michelle Bachelet will face Evelyn Matthei in a run-off election after the former president dominated the first round of voting but failed to secure 50 percent of the first round vote which would have secured victory for the former president Sunday.
The Nueva Mayoría candidate fell agonizingly short of claiming the election in the first round — a feat not achieved since Eduardo Frei in 1993 — but described the result as a mandate for an agenda which calls for a new constitution as well as reforms in education, tax, health and pension fund.
“There are no two ways about it, we have won this election and have done so with a wide majority,” Bachelet announced in Plaza San Francisco in downtown Santiago.So much for Bachelet's command of statistics.
Meanwhile, half of Chileans, finally given a choice--until now, voting had been mandatory--yawned at the entire prospect;
In an electoral roll of approximately 13.6 million, roughly 6.5 million cast a vote Sunday.But they gave a mandate.
That over half of all Chileans eligible to vote chose not to, shows just how beneficial the reign of Augusto Pinochet was for the country; most feel there wasn't enough at stake to care. When a country is healthy enough to ignore politics, that's bueno.
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