More than 15 million Chileans were called to vote who will succeed the president Sebastian Piñera on March 11, 2022, on a day marked by the scandalous lack of public transportation in the popular neighborhoods of Greater Santiago.
The candidate for Approve Dignity, Gabriel Boric, a 35-year-old deputy and former student leader, spoke by phone with Kast, who later assured on Twitter: “He deserves all our respect and constructive collaboration.”
The outgoing president, the conservative Sebastián Piñera, whose coalition supported Kast’s candidacy in the ballot, congratulated Boric through a greeting that was broadcast live.
“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.
Once again, previous polls were wrong in Chile. Three previous polls, by Brazil’s AtlasIntel, and Chile’s Cadem and Pulso Ciudadano, showed 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.
Among the proposals of the elected Chilean president are guarantee basic universal and minority rights, sexual freedom and gender equality.
The chose
Both candidates had 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.
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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