Marco Antonio Enríquez-Ominami Gumucio (born 12 June 1973) is a

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

an- French, filmmaker, politician, and

perennial candidate A perennial candidate is a political candidate who frequently runs for elected office and rarely, if ever, wins. Perennial candidates are most common where there is no limit on the number of times that a person can run for office and little cost ...

. From 2006 to 2010 he was a

Socialist Party Socialist Party is the name of many different political parties around the world. All of these parties claim to uphold some form of socialism, though they may have very different interpretations of what "socialism" means. Statistically, most of th ...

deputy Deputy or depute may refer to: * Steward (office) * Khalifa, an Arabic title that can signify "deputy" * Deputy (legislator), a legislator in many countries and regions, including: ** A member of a Chamber of Deputies, for example in Italy, Spain, ...

in Chile's

lower chamber A lower house is the lower chamber of a bicameral legislature, where the other chamber is the upper house. Although styled as "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide, the lower house has come to wield more power or otherwise exe ...

. 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 Karen Sylvia Doggenweiler Lapuente (27 August 1969) is a popular Chilean journalist and TV presenter. Biography Doggenweiler is the daughter of Félix Doggenweiler Heim, of Switzerland, Swiss-Germans, German descent and Silvia Lapuente, of Sp ...

, and has two children. Because of his long name he is frequently called MEO or ME-O both in writing and in speech.

Early life

Enríquez-Ominami was born in

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile (), is the capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is located in the country's central valley and is the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Regi ...

, ChileTwitCar with Marco
to Miguel Enríquez Espinosa, the founder and secretary general of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), and Manuela Gumucio Rivas, daughter of Rafael Agustín Gumucio Vives, a former senator and founder of the Falange Nacional political party.Pequeño resumen de la vida de Marco
. He is of Spanish,

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, and

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descent by his father's side, also

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n and

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

from his mother's side. In November 1973, two months after the military

coup d'état A coup d'état (; ; ), or simply a coup , is typically an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership. A self-coup is said to take place when a leader, having come to powe ...

which ousted the government of President

Salvador Allende Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens (26 June 1908 – 11 September 1973) was a Chilean socialist politician who served as the 28th president of Chile from 1970 until Death of Salvador Allende, his death in 1973 Chilean coup d'état, 1973. As a ...

Enríquez-Ominami and his family were expelled from the country via a military decree, and barred from entering the country for the next ten years. His father, who stayed in the country to organize and lead an underground résistance against the

Augusto Pinochet Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean military officer and politician who was the dictator of Military dictatorship of Chile, Chile from 1973 to 1990. From 1973 to 1981, he was the leader ...

dictatorship, was assassinated in October 1974 by DINA agents who uncovered his secret location in

. Enríquez-Ominami and his family found refuge in

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, where he grew up speaking French as his first language. He completed his primary education at Lycée Victor Hugo in

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between 1981 and 1986. He then finished his secondary education at Colegio Alianza Francesa and Saint George's College in Santiago.

Film and television career

From 1990 to 1995 Enríquez-Ominami completed a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the

University of Chile The University of Chile () is a public university, public research university in Santiago, Chile. It was founded on November 19, 1842, and inaugurated on September 17, 1843.

, where he was vice president of his major's student board. In 1996 he attended an intensive workshop for film directors at

La Fémis La Fémis (French: ''École nationale supérieure des Métiers de l'Image et du Son''; "National Institute for Professional Image and Sound", formerly known as the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques, IDHEC) is a French grande écol ...

in Paris. From 1998 Enríquez-Ominami began working as executive director of Rivas y Rivas producing company. In 2002 after producing and directing several shorts, feature films, reports, television ads and television films, he directed the political documentary ''Chile, los héroes están fatigados'' ("Chile, the heroes are exhausted"), which was selected to open the 16th FIPA film festival in

Biarritz Biarritz ( , , , ; also spelled ; ) is a city on the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in the French Basque Country in southwestern France. It is located from the border with Spain. It is a luxu ...

. The documentary was awarded at film festivals in

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and

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. In 2005 Enríquez-Ominami created and presided the ChileMedios Foundation, through which he developed several studies on local television audience behavior. In 2008, he directed the comedy film '' Mansacue'' produced by his production company and which was based on the television series ''La vida es una lotería'' by TVN. He worked as professor of film production in Chilean and Peruvian universities and collaborated in political campaigns for

Ricardo Lagos Ricardo Froilán Lagos Escobar (; born 2 March 1938) is a Chilean lawyer, economist and social-democratic politician who served as president of Chile from 2000 to 2006. During the 1980s he was a well-known opponent of the Chilean military di ...

and Carlos Ominami in Chile and also in

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

and

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

Political career

In December 2005 Enríquez-Ominami was elected

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 José Miguel Insulza Salinas (born June 2, 1943) is a Chilean politician, lawyer, and academic serving as a senator for the Arica y Parinacota Region since 2018. He previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1994 to 1999 and Ministe ...

and Eduardo Frei in the

Concertación The Concertación, officially the Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia (; ), was a coalition of center-left political parties in Chile, founded in 1988. Presidential candidates under its banner won every election from when military rul ...

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 A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

Internet sites for this effect. In June 2009 he resigned from the

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 A general election is an electoral process to choose most or all members of a governing body at the same time. They are distinct from by-elections, which fill individual seats that have become vacant between general elections. General 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 2013 General Election, Enríquez-Ominami competed for the Presidency of Chile for the second time, while representing the Progressive Party. This time he secured third place 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.

Works

*''Animales políticos. Dialogos filiales''. Enríquez-Ominami, Marco; Ominami Pascual, Carlos. 2004.

References

External links