Chile's Next President Will Facebook You

Read my story in Sunday's Washington Post about the future president of Chile on Facebook.



It's all of a sprawling 148 words - available in the Sunday paper's print edition as well - but despite the whopping wordcount I think there are a few points that could be fleshed out a bit more.

Or just reiterated: here's the poll that puts Sebastián Piñera's candidacy in the lead at almost 20 points above the second runner up, Ricardo Lagos, the president who served before Chile's current president Michelle Bachelet.

Piñera's Facebook friends are already quite confident that he'll be first right-wing candidate to win the Chilean presidency since Augusto Pinochet was tugged down almost two decades ago - they're giving Piñera nicknames like Grande Jefe, Big Boss and Señor Presidente.

Lagos was the first "socialist" since Pinochet and responsible for an economic upsurge that decimated much of Chile's rivers, forests and air and exacerbated economic inequality to its worst levels in 50 years, earning the "love" of Chile's most powerful economic groups (read and watch more about Ricardo Lagos here).

Again, Lagos was a nominally socialist, pro-working class candidate who ended up being the most aggressively neo-liberal, putting Pinochet to shame in that regard. "With friends like these" so the saying goes. Piñera would be the unnecessary enemy.

But really, how much worse it could get?

My landlord is a member of Chile's landed gentry, rides a Harley Davidson and travels internationally for kicks, his wife is a yoga instructor and digs the work of liberal economist Marcel Claude (the guy in the last link who ripped Lagos a new one with his book El Retorno de Fausto). So my landlord came over a few months ago and we were chatting about current president Michelle Bachelet's dismal showing in the polls and public unrest. He ascribed much of it to sexism. When I asked him about Piñera he said that Piñera would put the country on wheels and cart it out.

And that's different from Lagos, how?

Perhaps my views of Chilean presidential politics aren't nuanced enough but I see Piñera as simply a more honest version of Lagos, at least in terms of economic policy.

Piñera with his credit cards venture (to name but one) benefited from a free market economy that was forced on Chile, literally, through the barrel of a gun. Lagos' policy was but a continuation of the unregulated free-for-all established by Pinochet. Both Piñera and Lagos denounced Pinochet, supporting the "No!" campaign in the late 1980's.

For Lagos this endeared many voters to him while Piñera, center-right, drew sharp criticism from ultra-right members of Pinochet's party, whose Opus Dei candidate Joaquín Lavín almost beat Lagos in 2000, and Piñera lost to Bachelet, Chile's current "socialist" president from Lagos' party, in 2006. Piñera is likely to win the election in 2009 largely because Lagos' failed transportation project Transantiago has helped sabotage (you see she doesn't do all her own stunts) Bachelet's success as a presidenta.

Piñera is a populist, and has taken up the environment. As you can see in the first screenshot (above) he's been recruiting tree huggers through Facebook, and on the right one of the Facebook "Causes" he's joined (one that didn't make the cut in my WaPo piece) is "Stop Global Warming" - which makes sense because Piñera helped foot the bill for Al Gore's $400,000 layover/meet-and-greet in Chile early this year, I think somehow undercutting Lagos' bid for hosting rights.

Forbes Magazine estimates Piñera's net worth at $1.2 billion. He's LAN Airlines, he's Chilevisión, he's everything you ever wanted, baby.

When I first got to Chile in early 2006 I befriended a foreign ad producer who had just wrapped up a 100k spot filmed in Chile for a big European client. She said she met Piñera at a party and approached him about a network deal or something and she said she was really surprised that Piñera's office called her back like the next day. She showed me the number in her cell phone, which she'd labeled Piñera's "Bitch". I asked her what he was like and she said he was really short and carried himself as though he were a rock star.

I have absolutely no doubt that Piñera's savvy as a trend setter is fundamental to his success. Quick cash, global warming, Facebook - they're all hot, as are many of the girls who are friends with Piñera on his Facebook account (not necessarily counting those who can't find a boyfriend). According to Luis Ramírez who I interviewed for the piece, Piñera's advisers said that they were looking to the US presidential campaigns when considering their Web 2.0 powered campaign. Ramírez says that Sebastian's daughter Magdalena first convinced her dad to join Facebook, just when Facebook first got big in Chile - like, one month ago?.

Two days ago I mentioned Facebook to a Chilean my age and they hadn't heard of it yet.

Ramírez is hoping that Piñera will make permanent computer access for at least a million poor Chilean children a part of his campaign platform in the 2009 election. The group he started is like the Chilean version of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), called One Computer Per Child (UCPN) and he's hoping to get Piñera on board with this project, one that it seems Bachelet's current government has waffled on, to the untold frustration of Chilean blogger-activist-entrepreneurs like Leo Prieto.

Ramírez says that he's been told Piñera is considering joining his Facebook Cause but needs more information first. That seems to add weight to the decision, for once he does approve UCPN it will be with the shrewdness of someone who managed to sink Chilean consumers into morose credit card debt and is about to create an entire class of internet addicts out of political junkies. In other words, you can bet your bottom dollar that Romy, Dah and Cony are going to find a boyfriend.

Or three boyfriends. Let's hope that while they're at it, a million little kids can get computers.

UPDATE: 5-6 hours after Ramírez posted my WaPo piece on Facebook, Piñera has now joined the One Computer Per Child Cause







Coincidence?