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gewg_ writes:

El Reg is among the first to report:

Microsoft successfully lobbied against a law that would have seen Chile's government adopt open-source software, says Elmostrador, a newspaper in the South American nation.

The publication's report tells the tale of Vlado Mirosevic, a left-leaning politician who is the leader of the Chilean Liberal Party and its only representative in the national parliament.

In April this year, Mirosevic proposed a bill[1] that would have compelled Chile's government agencies to at least consider open-source software. Buying proprietary software would still be possible, once an agency justified the decision.

Elmostrador writes that Mirosevic gathered a decent amount of support by lobbying members from other parties and the bill had prospects of becoming law.

But those members soon found themselves in contact with a Microsoft representative who, the [newspaper] says, lobbied against the bill. Mirosevic soon found his support waning and, when the bill hit the floor of parliament this week, it didn't pass.

He's now rather miffed, because one of his motives was saving Chile some cash. Chile's 2013 government spending was about US$58bn, and Mirosevic says a few hundred million of that goes into government software licenses each year.

There's no suggestion in the Elmostrador story that Microsoft did anything naughty and, like any business, it is entitled to lobby in a democracy.

[1] All content at that site appears to be behind scripts. I don't do scripts.