Chile’s race for the presidency has finally turned into a historic choice of direction between left and right.
In the elections on Sunday, the majority of the votes were counted, the German-born lawyer José Antonio Kast in front. The ultra-conservative candidate and son of a Wehrmacht officer who emigrated to Chile in the 1950s won around 28 percent of the vote. He is followed in second place with almost 26 percent, Gabriel Boric, a left-wing former student leader, tattooed and just 35 years old.
After none of the candidates achieved the necessary absolute majority in the first ballot, the two first-placed candidates now have to compete against each other in a second round. This is scheduled for December 19th.
There is great fear that the choice will deepen the rifts even further
Many Chileans had expected a runoff between Kast and Boric, but at the same time feared this result, as it represents the deep division of society in the South American country – the fear is now great that the election could only deepen these rifts.
Gabriel Boric, the candidate of the left-wing camp, stands for the hundreds of thousands, especially young Chileans, who are fighting against what they consider to be an encrusted and unequal society. Chile is the wealthiest country in South America. Over the past few decades, the economy has grown rapidly and poverty has fallen. There was talk of a “Chilean miracle”. Fewer and fewer people, however, finally had the feeling of being able to participate in this miracle.
The gap between rich and poor in Chile was huge even before Covid-19. In the pandemic, however, the richest of the rich were able to expand their already abundant wealth even further, while at the same time thousands of families plunged into poverty.
The social safety net in Chile is thin. Many areas of general interest are in the hands of private companies, from education to water supply. For decades there have been violent demonstrations against the neoliberal economic model, which the Chilean military dictatorship wrote into the constitution before its departure at the end of the 1980s. The protests shaped a whole generation of Chileans and also spawned a squad of young and left-wing politicians, from the newly elected communist mayor of Santiago de Chile to Gabriel Boric, who is now two years after the outbreak of the last one large mass protests that the presidency wants to win in his homeland.
For a long time it looked as if Boric’s chances were not bad – but then the ultra-conservative and strictly Catholic right-wing candidate, José Antonio Kast, appeared almost out of nowhere. In the polls he overtook one competitor after the other and now he is also in first place after the election.
It is the second time that Kast has applied for the office of president. Last time, in 2017, he got just eight percent of the vote, a far behind fourth place.
The fact that he is now at the forefront shows on the one hand how conservative parts of Chilean society are today despite all the supposed change: Kast has nine children himself and strictly rejects abortions. He is against too much political correctness and has publicly defended the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet: “If Pinochet were still alive, he would choose me,” he said in a 2017 radio interview. He is for a continuation of the neoliberal economic model and also creates a mood against immigrants. He suggested building a ditch on the country’s northern border to block refugees from Venezuela or Haiti from entering the country.
Kast’s success is tantamount to a failure of the country’s classical political forces
Kast also advertised himself on the internet, with huge social media campaigns in which his program was packaged in catchy slogans such as “Dare to go” or “Everything will be fine”. In addition, Kast presented himself as an approachable and personable-funny candidate – a recipe that has already worked for other right-wing conservative politicians in Latin America, from Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.
Nevertheless, Kast’s success in the elections must also be seen as a failure of the traditional political forces in the country: the candidate of the moderate conservatives, Sebastián Sichel, and the center-left candidate Yasna Provoste together received little more than a quarter of the vote. A bitter defeat for the parties that had previously shared power alternately over decades.
It will now be your voters who will matter: Over the next four weeks, both Kast and Boric will fight for the votes of those who have not yet decided in favor of either of the two.
At an event after the election on Sunday evening, the conservative cast first thanked God and his family in front of a cheering crowd of his supporters, then emphasized that these were the most important elections of the past 30 years. “The majority of Chileans want a quiet and safe country,” said Kast.
Meanwhile, Gabriel Boric emphasized in front of his voters that you have to fight for the votes of those who are still missing for his victory without a break. “We want a fairer and safer Chile,” said Boric. “Hope wins over fear.”