Chileans elect their first woman president

SANTIAGO, Chile - Socialist Michelle Bachelet has been elected Chile's first woman president today, taking more than half the vote, consolidating gains the left has made in recent years throughout Latin America.

Bachelet, from Chile's ruling center-left coalition, had 53.51 per cent of the vote while opposition candidate Sebastian Pinera had 46.48 per cent, based on a tally of 97.52 per cent votes counted, the government Electoral Service said.

"I want to congratulate Michelle Bachelet for her triumph," Pinera, a moderate conservative and one of Chile's wealthiest men, said in a concession speech on live television.

Bachelet, imprisoned and tortured during the 1973-1990 Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, will be the fourth consecutive president from the center-left pact formed in the 1980s to oppose Pinochet.

It has run the copper-producing country of 16 million people since Pinochet stepped down in 1990.

Supporters began celebrating at Bachelet's downtown election headquarters immediately after the official results were read on television by an electoral official.

"It's a great vote for the republic's first woman president," said Sergio Bitar, a former cabinet minister and top member of Bachelet's campaign team.

A Bachelet victory consolidates a shift to the left in Latin America, where leftists now run Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela, some with politics more extreme than others. A socialist will soon take office in Bolivia and a leftist is favored to win Mexico's July presidential election.

Bachelet, a medical doctor and former defence minister, will be only the second woman elected to head a South American nation, and the first who was not the widow of a former president.

- REUTERS