Santiago celebrados!
Michelle Bachelet has won the second round of the Presidential election held today in Chile. Michelle becomes Latin America’s and Chile’s first female President. It seems that Santiago has gone mad!!
The new president elect, with 53.49% against billionaire rival Sebastian Pinera, has just made her triumphant speech before 250,000 people in a park in central Santiago. Elsewhere people watch or listen in earnest… if, that is, they are not driving. If they are driving, then an uncontrollable force results in a sudden attraction between hands and horns!
We live around 200metres from a main route in Santiago, the inner ring-road as it were, and I can hear a choir of car horns sounding permanently! It’s like Chile just won the World Cup, only that is very unlikely given the quality of football here (noise and intensity comparable to Italian football, standards more like that of Scotland). I suppose its as if England just got into the quarter-finals of the World Cup. Although that party didn’t last as long as this one!