SANTIAGO, Dec 15: Chileans were voting on Sunday in a runoff election likely to hand former President Michelle Bachelet a fresh four-year term, with the centre-left leader gunning for a landslide triumph to bolster her reform mandate.

In Chile’s first presidential showdown between two women, voters are expected to give overwhelming backing to Bachelet, who led the country from 2006 to 2010, impressed by her easy charm and plans to tackle deep income inequality.

Her right-wing rival, the sharp-tongued Evelyn Matthei, has been weakened by her family’s ties to the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet and by her post in the unpopular government of outgoing President Sebastian Pinera.

In the first round of voting on Nov 17, Bachelet, a 62-year-old pediatrician by training, won nearly twice as many votes as Matthei, a 60-year-old economist and former labour minister. But Bachelet fell just short of the 50 percent needed to win outright, pushing the vote into a runoff.

The two women were playmates during their childhood on an air force base, though the bloody 1973 military coup later divided their families.

“This is not about choosing between ‘two women’, as the press likes to put it,” Bachelet said in a closing campaign speech to hundreds of cheering supporters on Thursday.“There are deep differences here. I think Chile is ready to face the transformations that will allow it to be the country we all want.—Reuters