Chile poll results show left on the way back

Although right-wing billionaire Sebastian Pinera led the vote, taking 44 per cent to former president and the centre-left Concertacion candidate Eduardo Frei's 30 per cent, independent candidates to the left of the main parties emerged as possible kingmakers for the election's second round on January 17.

For the first time since Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship ended in 1989, candidates for the Communist party were elected to congress, while Isabel Allende, the daughter of assassinated president Salvador Allende, was elected as a Socialist party senator.

Mr Arrate, who won 7 per cent of the vote as the far-left JPM's presidential candidate, said that his support, and the 20 per cent vote for Marco Enriquez-Ominami, who split from Concertacion over the ruling party's "austere and moderate" policies, proved that "a new era is beginning for Chile."

"The bi-partisan party system cannot continue like this," he insisted.

Mr Arrate said that Mr Pinera, who is considered one of the 700 richest men in the world by Forbes magazine, was just a "new face on the same policies" that the Concertacion party of current president Michele Bachelet and former president Eduardo Frei had pursued during its 20 years in power.

"They have run out of ideas, and the candidates for the second round, Frei and Pinera, should now respond to the ideas raised by the independent candidates," he declared.

Mr Ominami added that "Chile has been left with a choice in January between two candidates who represent the past, who represent yesterday."

Declaring his refusal to endorse either Mr Pinera or Mr Frei, the former Socialist party congressional deputy insisted that "such a choice is no choice."

"It is impossible to support yesterday's politicians," he said.