page_title: Marco Enríquez-Ominami
section_title: Political career
hierarchical_section_title: Marco Enríquez-Ominami / Political career
caption_attribution_description: Brasília - Presidente Lula recebe em audiência o candidato independente à Presidência do Chile, Marco-Enríquez Ominami
context_page_description: Marco Antonio Enríquez-Ominami Gumucio is a Chilean-French filmmaker and politician. From 2006 to 2010 he was a Socialist Party deputy in Chile's lower chamber. In 2009 he quit the party and ran for President of the Republic as independent, where he finished third with 20% of the vote. He is currently the leader of the Progressive Party, which he founded in 2010.
  Enríquez-Ominami is the son of Revolutionary Left Movement's historical leader Miguel Enríquez and sociologist Manuela Gumucio. His adoptive father is former senator Carlos Ominami. Enríquez-Ominami is married to the Chilean TV hostess Karen Doggenweiler, and has two children. Because of his long name he is frequently called MEO or ME-O both in writing and in speech.
context_section_description: In December 2005 Enríquez-Ominami was elected deputy for District 10 in central Chile for a period of four years. He obtained the highest vote in that district's history. As deputy he worked on the Science and Technology and Agricultural commissions, and presided the Investigating Commission on State-funded advertisement and the Special Commission on the study of the Chilean political regime. He has introduced around 150 bills, many of which have been approved.
  In December 2008, Enríquez-Ominami said he was available to compete with José Miguel Insulza and Eduardo Frei in the Concertación presidential primaries. However, after claiming the Concertación leadership changed the primary rules in order to bar him from the process, Enríquez-Ominami decided to run as an independent. With the financial support of businessman Max Marambio, he began the process of collecting nearly 36,000 signatures needed to register his independent candidacy. He made extensive use of social networking Internet sites for this effect. In June 2009 he resigned from the Socialist Party to meet the legal deadline.
  Despite being relatively unknown, Enríquez-Ominami quickly rose in opinion polls, garnering 10% of support by April 2009, capturing the leftist electorate dissatisfied with the choice of Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei as the Concertación candidate. For the parallel legislative elections, he launched his own list of candidates, which was split between independent candidates (including three lawmakers seeking reelection) and members of two minor parties that supported his candidacy: the Humanist Party and the Ecologist Party. He placed the strongest candidates in districts where Concertación party-leaders were vying for seats. However, though he made a strong showing, Enríquez-Ominami ultimately fell short and was eliminated in the first round of voting with 20.13% of the vote. His parliamentary list also failed to win any seats, obtaining a low 4% of the vote. After the election, he refused to endorse either candidate, saying "Eduardo Frei and Sebastián Piñera are too much alike [...] They don't represent hope, nor change, nor the future." On December 16, his economic advisor, Paul Fontaine, joined Piñera's runoff campaign. Nearly a week later another one of his economic advisors, Luis Eduardo Escobar, joined Frei's team. Finally, four days before the election Enríquez-Ominami held a press conference where he said he was going to vote for the "candidate of the 29%," meaning to vote for Frei, but maintaining his supporters were free to choose their own candidate.
  In the General Election of 2013, Enríquez-Ominami competed for the Presidency of Chile for the second time, now representing the Progressive Party. This time he placed third obtaining only 10,98% of the votes. Enríquez-Ominami also run for the Presidency of Chile in the General Election of 2017. He gathered 5,71% of the vote and placed sixth among 9 candidates.
caption: Enríquez-Ominami with President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
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