Sebastián Piñera
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Miguel Juan Sebastián Piñera Echenique (born December 1, 1949) is a Chilean businessman and politician. He is a member of the center-right National Renewal (RN) party, a constituent of the Alliance for Chile coalition. He ran for president of Chile in the 2005 election, losing to Michelle Bachelet in the runoff election.
Piñera was born in Santiago, Chile. He is married to Cecilia Morel and has four children: Magdalena, Cecilia, Sebastián and Cristóbal. He has an undergraduate degree in Economics from Chile's Catholic University as well as a Master's and Ph.D. in this subject from Harvard University. He is the owner of Chilevisión, a Chilean television channel; a major shareholder of Lan Airlines, and Colo-Colo a soccer team; and was a board director of several major Chilean companies. In an effort to quell criticism of a potential conflict of interests, he voluntarily left the board of many of the companies he owns in order to run for President of Chile despite this not being a requirement of Chilean law.
According to Forbes magazine, Piñera is Chile's third richest businessmen (his fortune is estimated at US$1.2 billion). His wealth is attributed in great part due to his involvement in the introduction of credit cards to Chile in the late 1970s and his subsequent investments.
Piñera's involvement in politics began in the late 1980s when he openly supported the "No" option against Augusto Pinochet in the 1988 plebiscite. After the return of democracy, Piñera headed the 1989 presidential campaign of Hernán Büchi, a former finance minister of the Pinochet dictatorship. During the same election process, Piñera was elected as senator and soon after joined the center-right National Renewal party.
On May 14, 2005 Piñera surprisingly announced his own candidacy for the 2005 presidential election. In the first round of the election, on December 11, Piñera obtained 25.4% of the vote which placed him in second place. Since no candidate achieved an absolute majority, a runoff election was held on January 15, 2006 between Piñera and Michelle Bachelet of the governing coalition. Bachelet won the presidency with over 53% of the vote.
