SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Isabel Allende, a ruling party senator in Chile and the daughter of deposed ex-president Salvador Allende, said she is considering running for president in next year’s elections, a local newspaper reported on Saturday.
Allende’s possible bid for the top job in Chile could pit her against ex-president Ricardo Lagos, another member of the socialist ruling party who has expressed interest in running.
Allende, whose father was ousted by former dictator Augusto Pinochet in a coup in 1973, said she has been leaning toward making a bid at the insistence of Chileans, according to local daily El Mercurio.
“For me it’s an honour to know that people think I’m an option. There’s also a potent symbolic element, that there be another Allende,” she was quoted as saying in El Mercurio.
She did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Allende, a distant relative of the well-known author of the same name, is one of the few representatives of the ruling party whose popularity has not sunk alongside President Michele Bachelet’s.
