More than 15 million Chileans are called to vote who will succeed the president Sebastian Piñera on March 11, 2022.
Side by side in the polls, the far-right lawyer Jose Antonio Kast, 55, opposed to abortion and equal marriage, confronts the young left-wing deputy Gabriel Boric, 35, the minimum age to run for president in Chile.
“We are new generations that enter politics with clean hands, warm hearts but cool heads”said Boric, from the Approve Dignity alliance (which brings together the Frente Amplio and the Communist Party), after casting his vote in southern Punta Arenas, his hometown, some 3,000 km south of Santiago.
When voting in the rural town of Paine, where he lives, on the outskirts of Santiago, Kast predicted “a narrow election” and raised the possibility that it could be defined in the Electoral Councils, in charge of analyzing the votes later.
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Telam
Asked by the press, the far-right candidate affirmed that the result could be defined by a difference of about 50,000 votes. Boric affirmed that he would abide by the result “whatever it may be.”
Three previous polls, by Brazil’s AtlasIntel, and Chile’s Cadem and Pulso Ciudadano, show a narrow margin between the two candidates, with Boric slightly ahead.
The country has undergone profound changes since 2019, when massive protests arose demanding greater equality and social rights.
That process triggered the election last year in favor of drafting a new Constitution to replace the one promulgated during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). The Convention that drafts the new text – dominated by representatives of the left – should conclude its work in the middle of next year, under the gaze of the new president.
The candidates
Gabriel Boric He is a 35-year-old deputy, the minimum age to be president of Chile. He was born in the southern Magallanes region and was a recognized student leader.
His proposals include guarantee basic universal and minority rights, sexual freedom and gender equality; in addition to facing a defender of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) such as Kast, something unprecedented in Chile since the return of democracy in 1990.
Opposite is Jose Antonio Kast, a 55-year-old former congressman and lawyer, who during his campaign refused to describe the de facto government of Pinochet as a dictatorship. He has also publicly declared himself a supporter of the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Among his campaign promises, which he has moderated for this ballot to capture the vote of the center, stand out order and security and maintaining the neoliberal Pinochetist model, questioned in the streets by the 2018 protests.
The chose
Both candidates have moderated their speeches after the first round of November 21, where Kast obtained the first majority with 27.9% of the votes (1,961,122 votes) and Boric was second with 25.8% (1,814,809).
Despite representing political extremes, in the last month both candidates added proposals from the center-left and center-right candidates to their government plans, to reach the necessary 50% plus one of the votes, to become the sixth president since the return to democracy in Chile.
The results of these elections are an uncertainty, since the last polls have given triumphs to both the left-wing and the right-wing candidates, but always on a narrow margin, so most experts expect a very tight result.
Another question is the number of voters who will go to the polls, since voting is voluntary in Chile, and historically 50% of the register attends. Almost 15 million people are authorized to vote, who must respect a strict health protocol for the coronavirus, which includes social distancing, the use of chinstrap and alcohol gel within the more than 2,800 voting centers.
The tables They opened at 8 a.m. today and will close at 6 p.m., in a polarized environment that has not been lived on the streets of Chile for three decades.
Today’s winner must take office on March 11 with a very even Congress in its composition, between the political forces of the right and the left. One of the challenges that the new government will call, four months into its mandate, an exit plebiscite for Chileans to approve or reject the new constitutional text that the Constitutional Convention is writing.
Source From: Ambito
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