Chilean election throws up ‘stark’ choice between far-right populist and leftist millennial

Chile is heading for a polarised election run-off after hard-right former congressman Jose Antonio Kast finished ahead of left-wing lawmaker Gabriel Boric in the first round of voting.

With over 97% of the votes counted, Kast had won 27.94% versus 25.75% for Boric. A “sizeable gap” had opened up “between them and the rest of the field, although both were well short of the majority needed to win outright”, Reuters said.

The vote, described by the news agency as the “country’s most divisive since its 1990 return to democracy”, has split the electorate into “those seeking a shake-up of Chile’s free-market model and those demanding a harder line against crime and immigration”.

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Referendum on the future

Voters headed to the ballot boxes yesterday to decide between two “starkly contrasting visions for the country’s future after two years of street protests and political unrest”, The Guardian said.

In the red corner, Boric, “who shot to prominence during Chile’s 2011 education protests”, has pledged to “bury” Chile’s “past as a cradle of neoliberalism imposed under the dictator General Augusto Pinochet”.

Instead, he has pledged to “build a fairer Chile marked by inclusivity, diversity and liberal social values”, the paper added, telling supporters in Casablanca last week they are campaigning for “a state that guarantees rights and dignity”.

In the blue corner is Kast, a “55-year-old former congressman and father of nine” who “has campaigned on a platform of cracking down on crime while defending free markets and traditional values”, reported the Financial Times.

He “has spoken out against immigration, same-sex marriage and abortion” on the campaign trail, appealing to “voters alienated by the left, promising to restore order and slash taxes under his new nationalist Republican party that he founded in 2019”.

These “starkly different visions for the country’s future” have seen the election become a “referendum on the Chilean economic model”, the paper added. The status quo has “delivered some of the best growth in Latin America in recent decades”, but a growing number of Chileans argue it has “failed to share the benefits widely among the population”.

Recasting the nation

The election is the first since “two years of sometimes violent protests by Chileans demanding quality-of-life improvements”, Reuters said.

The national demonstrations – of which Boric was a prominent organiser – “helped bring about an ongoing rewrite of the nation’s Pinochet-era constitution”, the news agency added. But “increasing fatigue among Chileans fed up with political violence, combined with a widespread perception that crime is on the rise, has boosted Kast”.

Addressing supporters after the majority of first-round votes had been counted, Kast said “Chile’s people have spoken”, adding his vision had won over voters in a race between “liberty and communism”.

Meanwhile, Boric told his backers that “the crusade is that hope wins over fear”, adding: “We have to look further afield and go out to bring people in from beyond our boundaries.”

The demonstrations Boric helped organise “prompted a landmark plebiscite which led to an assembly to rewrite Chile’s constitution”, The Guardian said, “which had been drafted without popular input under Pinochet”.

This means that whoever wins the election will also “accompany the constitutional process and the transformations undergoing society over the next four years”, Claudia Heiss, a political scientist at the University of Chile, told the paper.

“Whoever is elected is going to take those first tentative steps through the transition of the political system.”

‘Role-model to cautionary tale’

“For most of this century Chile was a stable and predictable country, with steady economic growth and moderate politics,” said The Economist. “But that stable Chile disappeared two years ago, in an explosion of massive and sometimes violent protests.”

With the national election now coming down to a vote between “two extremists”, that shift from “role-model” to “cautionary tale” shows “Chile has yet to recover its balance”.

This election fell while “Chile’s political scene is unusually agitated and with the deep-rooted anger displayed during the anti-government protests of 2019 and 2020 still raw”, the BBC said.

Some of the suggestions put forward for the nation’s new constitution include “specific guarantees of indigenous and gender rights to access to natural resources”, the broadcaster added.

But this has “fed into the presidential election campaign, provoking debate and in some cases controversy”.

Boric “is a democrat”. However, “some of his allies, who include the Communist Party, are not”, The Economist warned. He “might well prove to be more pragmatic than his programme suggests”, but “plenty of Chileans are alarmed by it and by his allies”.

On the other hand, Kast belongs to the “hard right” and has “exploited fears of disorder, violence and uncontrolled immigration, offering a mano dura (a firm hand)”. He would usher in a government that would be “the most right-wing one since the dictatorship of General Pinochet, whose crimes he sometimes denies”, the paper added.

“Neither offers the combination of stability, economic growth and reform that the country needs.”