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Weekly Report - 23 May 2013 (WR-13-20)

CHILE: Piñera fires opening salvoes in election campaign

Successive heads of state have struggled with how best to pitch the state-of-the-nation address delivered annually for nearly 90 years now on 21 May, the same day in 1879 that Captain Arturo Prat died leading his men aboard the Peruvian ironclad Huáscar during the War of the Pacific. They tend to opt for a balance between unity behind national interests, in homage to Prat, and party political gestures. President Sebastián Piñera had tough words for his Bolivian peer Evo Morales and the international legal challenge he is mounting to demand sovereignty over a Pacific coastline lost in that war, but for the bulk of his speech he sounded more like he was on the stump than addressing congress. Piñera drew myriad parallels between the ailing Chile he claimed to have inherited from Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), who is seeking re-election in November, and the vigorous one he says he will leave.

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