Over in Chile, they remember another anniversary of the 1973 overthrow of President Allende.
Salvador Allende, socialist 1,075,616
Jorge Alessandri, independent 1,036,278
Radomiro Tomic, Christian Democrat 824,849
Allende won a plurality, or 36%. It was challenged and ultimately upheld in the courts. In retrospect, a runoff would have been better and Alessandri would have probably won. It did not happen that way and Allende, whose socialist party was actually to the left of the Chilean communist party, made a massive turn to the left.
By the summer of 1973, Chile was in turmoil. Shortages abounded, political prisons were filled, workers were on strike, and Fidel Castro literally came down to give orders. President Allende had lost control of the situation. I recall a business colleague of my father who returned from a trip to Santiago totally horrified with the situation. He saw the panic in the streets, frustration and called it a perfect storm for a coup.
In early September, the Chilean legislature and the Chilean high court had ordered General Augusto Pinochet to take over. That was what the left calls the 'coup' although there are those in Chile who said it was not a coup given that Pinochet did not act on his own. He formed a military government and from there learned that it was not easy to turn around a country devastated by decades of extended socialism, culminating in the full blown communism of Allende. He implemented market reforms, through his "Chicago Boys" free market economists, the first time such reforms had been tried -- privatization, free trade, private savings accounts for pensions (truly revolutionary) -- which was a radical shift. At times, the reforms were painful, and the adjustment was hard on the Chilean people. Pinochet backtracked at least once, but in the end, went with the market reforms because it worked better than all other approaches.