( belonging to the
Chile an
Right-wing political coalition
Alliance For Chile in conjunction with the
Independent Democratic Union (UDI). The party president is Sergio Díez, and its principal leaders are
Sebastián Piñera , the latest presidential candidate of the party, and Andrés Allamand (liberal).
The history of begins in
1987 , when
Chile was preparing for the
1988 Plebiscite that would determine the continuity of rule of
Augusto Pinochet who had been in power since the
Coup of
1973 . The party was founded in the same year on
April 29 with 351 founding members. In this way, National Renewal was the first political party to form in Chile after the lifting on the ban of political parties that had been established after the coup; by December of that year, 61,167 members, led by Andrés Allamand, had joined. The principal idea that the party proclaimed was to generate an environment of calm during the return of
Democracy .
The party supported UDI candidate
Joaquín Lavín as the sole Alliance candidate in the 1999/2000 presidential elections, who went on to obtain 47.5% of the votes in the first round, but was subsequently defeated in the second round by
Ricardo Lagos .
During early 2005, the party initially supported Lavín to again run as the sole candidate of the Alliance in the
Presidential Election of that year. However, in face of Lavin's declining opinion poll numbers,
Sebastián Piñera announced his candidacy as the National Renewel candidate thus ensuring that the Alliance have two candidates for the election. In the first round on
11 December , Piñera obtained 25.4% of the vote which was enough to send him to the run-off on
15 January 2006 with
Michelle Bachelet . Obtaining 46.5% of the vote, Piñera was defeated by Bachelet.
In the
Legislative Elections , also on
11 December 2005 , the party won, as part of the
Alliance For Chile , 20 out of 117 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and currently holds 7 out of 38 elected seats in the Senate.
National Renewal has had seven party presidents in its history:
