A Conservative Won the Chilean Presidential Election

           A conservative won the Chilean presidential election last month, as a former President returns to power after four years of liberal rule.  Conservatives are now the largest party in both chambers of Chile’s Parliament, winning nearly a majority in both, at the expense of the left.

            The election of a conservative in Chile is part of a trend I have been posting about for more than a year, which is the rejection of the Socialist revolutionary trend of the 2000s that had been led by the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez that had spread widely throughout Latin America, especially in South America.  Since, then, voters in Argentina and Peru have replaced liberal governments with conservative ones, while the liberal President of Brazil was impeached and removed from office for corruption.  Note: her popular liberal predecessor has been convicted and was recently sentenced to prison for corruption.  Venezuelan and Bolivian voters have also made clear their rejection of socialism, authoritarianism and corruption, but their will has been thwarted by their leftist leaders.  After Venezuelans elected the democratic opposition to a supermajority of the Congress and Bolivians rejected a constitutional referendum to end presidential term limits, the Venezuelan dictator used a special constitutional provision to usurp the Congress and replace it with a rubber stamp assembly while the Bolivian Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing the President to serve another term, despite the constitutional prohibition. 

           Chile, which has a free trade agreement with the United States, has long been one of Latin America’s most prosperous states.