After the democratic election of President Salvador Allende in 1970, an economic war ordered by President Richard Nixon, among other things, caused the 1973 Chilean coup d'état with the involvement of the CIA due to Allende's democratic socialist leanings. What followed was the decades-long US-backed military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. In 1988 a presidential referendum was held in order to confirm Pinochet's ruling for 8 more years. The oppositional Concertation of Parties for Democracy endorsed the "No" option, winning the referendum and ending Pinochet's rule democratically. After that free elections were held in 1989 with Concertation winning again.