Victims like the 88-year-old woman whose eyelashes were ripped out when Pinochet's guards blindfolded her with sticky tape, families still mourning relatives who "disappeared" and children learning about the past have thronged the museum since it opened this week, days before Sunday's presidential election in which the right stands on the brink of returning to power.

If Sebastián Piñera, a billionaire businessman, repeats his first-round win over Eduardo Frei, a former president, he will end 20 years of rule by a leftist coalition that has held power continuously since Chile returned to democracy. It would also be the right's first victory at the ballot box since 1958.

The silver-haired 60-year-old airline and financial magnate is light-years away from the sinister general whose 1973 coup and iron-fisted rule left more than 30,000 dead. He has taken pains to stress that he voted "no" in a 1988 referendum on the extension of Mr Pinochet's rule.

However, many voters are concerned that some of Mr Piñera's advisers held public posts under the dictatorship and could push him to be more hard-line. Some of his supporters, such as the man who waved a flag emblazoned with Pinochet's face at a rally this week, remain defenders of the dead general.

That may explain why Chile's richest man has struggled to expand the right's power base. Although Mr Piñera was comfortably ahead in the election's first round in December, winning 44 per cent to Mr Frei's 29 per cent, he is now facing a tight vote on Sunday against a contender who has staged a comeback.

"When they say that if we get into government, it'll be the end of social and employment programmes, the death of culture, that the sea will dry up and the sun will go out, these are lies that have been repeated so much that people end up believing them because some people are scared by this [prospect]," Mr Piñera acknowledged this week.

A new Mori poll predicts a knife-edge election, with Mr Piñera on 50.9 per cent and Mr Frei winning 49 per cent.

Roberto Ossandón, who ran Mr Piñera's campaign in 2005, says the businessman and former senator became complacent after his success in the first round. "Piñera can lose, and he hasn't wanted to see that," says Mr Ossandón.

But he believes that if Mr Piñera is elected, voters should not underestimate his ability to deliver on ambitious campaign pledges, including creating 1m new jobs and delivering 6 per cent economic growth a year. "He is absolutely tireless and perseveres to get what he wants," Mr Ossandón says.

Mr Piñera calls himself blunt and said in a biographical piece for El Mercurio newspaper last month that he quickly learned with his five siblings that "hiding my emotions and being tough could be a good survival strategy. I think that explains a good part of my character".

Although Mr Piñera is worth a reputed $1.2bn (£740m, €827m), he is not brash. He wears a brightly coloured plastic watch, lives in a smart but not palatial house, has a helicopter but not the flashiest model, and colleagues say he is cautious with money.

"What drives him is not money. What makes him tick is winning, doing things well, being a success, being top of the class," says José Miguel Barros, a senior managing director at LarraínVial, Chile's biggest investment bank, who has sat on a board with Mr Piñera.

With his doctorate in economics, he has built a business empire that includes Chile's most popular football team, Colo-Colo. That, plus reported cosmetic surgery on his eyes, has sparked comparisons with the Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, though Mr Piñera has agreed to put his investments in blind trusts.

Smiling from colourful campaign billboards, his central promise is change after two decades of rule by the Concertación coalition, which has been riven by infighting and widely perceived as stagnant.

But the right's history could be a millstone. Many Chileans fear his job promises are empty and that Mr Piñera will prove a poor listener who cannot delegate.

Nevertheless, some Chileans are willing to take the chance. "I'm voting for Piñera even though I've always voted left," said Jorge Ruíz, visiting the Museum of Memory. "I think Piñera has a great opportunity to show the right has changed."