Socialist Michelle Bachelet won elections on Sunday to become the first female president in socially conservative Chile.
With almost all votes counted, Ms Bachelet, from Chile's ruling centre-left coalition, had 53 per cent versus 47 per cent for opposition candidate Sebastian Pinera, the government Electoral Service said.
"Who would have thought 20, 10, five years ago, that Chile would elect a woman president? . . . Thank you for inviting me to lead this voyage," Ms Bachelet, a separated mother and former political exile, told jubilant supporters outside her electoral headquarters in downtown Santiago.
Ms Bachelet (54) a medical doctor who was imprisoned and tortured during the 1973-1990 Augusto Pinochet dictatorship before living in exile in the former East Germany and Australia, will be the fourth consecutive president from the centre-left alliance that has run Chile since 1990.
The former defence minister is only the second woman elected to head a South American nation, and the first who is not the widow of a former president. She is set to be sworn in on March 11th.
Mr Pinera, one of Chile's wealthiest men and a moderate conservative who led a rightist alliance that has been in the opposition for 16 years, congratulated Ms Bachelet in a concession speech.