Leading presidential right-wing candidate Sebastian Pinera appointed his fellow right-winger as head of his political committee in a move to boost unity in a runoff due in January.

Joaquin Lavin, the other candidate from Chile's conservatives, was knocked out of the race with 23 percent of the vote in the first round of elections on Sunday.

Lavin of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) threw his support behind Pinera, who ended second with 25.4 percent of the vote, mending a conservative alliance that was fractured during the campaign.

Chile's two leading right-wingers announced Monday after meeting at Pinera's home that Lavin would replace Alberto Espina, a senator from Pinera's National Renewal Party, as Pinera's campaign boss.

Together the two garnered 48.63 percent of the vote in Chile's Sunday elections.

Sources close to Pinera said Lavin would be the first of a series of UDI heavyweights who would join his team.

The right-wingers would also seek out leading lights of the business world such as Juan Claro, president of the Production and Trade Federation, said the sources.

In Sunday's elections, socialist Michelle Bachelet from the center-left coalition that has ruled Chile since Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship ended in 1990, won the first round of elections with 45.9 percent of the vote.
 
Bachelet, who seeks to be Chile's first female president, immediately kicked off the final phase of her campaign, calling supporters to a mass rally Tuesday at a Santiago stadium.

The medical doctor and former defense minister has pledged to overhaul Chile's private pension system and continue the free-market economic policies.

Pinera, who owns 27 percent of Chile's main air carrier LAN Airlines, has promised to create 1 million jobs in four years and crack down on crimes by beefing up the police force if elected.

(Xinhua News Agency December 13, 2005)