Bachelet wins presidential runoff in Chile

(Vatican Radio) Michelle Bachelet has convincingly won the runoff for the Presidency of Chile. Bachelet with her socialist leftist coalition has won 62 percent of the vote while Evelyn Matthei a former Labor Minister of the outgoing right of center Administration gained 38 percent.

No one is allowed to serve back to back Presidential terms in Chile. But in her last stint between 2006 and 2010, Michelle Bachelet's moderate policies proved successful, and she left the job with a a popularity rating of more than 80 percent. While Matthei is opposed to tax hikes, Bachelet is proposing increasing Corporate Tax to make all education, especially university free to all.

Chile is a major copper producer and one of the richest nations in Latin America. However the divide between rich and poor is the most pronounced in the entire region. Michelle Bachelet is pledging to narrow it. She's also promising to reform strictures imposed and encapsulated by the 1980 Constitution, during the 1973 to 1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, which have politically, socially and economically controlled Chile.

Listen to the report by correspondent James Blears: