President Ricardo Lagos said on Thursday he will send a bill to Congress that would eliminate one of the last legal vestiges of the Pinochet dictatorship by changing the way Chileans elect legislators, Reuters reported. Lagos, who has already steered through Congress other reforms to the 1980 constitution written under former dictator Augusto Pinochet, said he hopes to send the bill to Congress before his six-year term ends in March. "I am conscious of the fact that in what is left of my term the issue will not be fully dealt with. But I think that it's very important to show the country and the world our will (to change)," Lagos told Radio Cooperativa. Chile's current "binominal" election system maintains an artificial balance between his center-left coalition and the opposition center-right coalition by almost guaranteeing one legislator from each is elected in every district. Under the current system, the coalitions present two candidates per district, and each side's top vote-getter goes to Congress. If two candidates from one coalition win more than 66 percent of votes in one district, both go to Congress. --more 2327 Local Time 2027 GMT
