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Chile: Elections lead to flow

SANTIAGO, CHILE – Two one-time outsiders from opposite extremes of the political spectrum received the most votes on Sunday in the Chilean presidential election but failed to garner enough support to win. outright victory, establishing what could be a polarizing flow in the most economically advanced sector.

Jose Antonio Kast, a far-right lawmaker with a history of defending Chile’s military dictatorship, came in first with 28% of the vote compared with 25% for former student protest leader Gabriel Boric. One candidate who virtually ran from the US without even making it to Chile leads a group of five other candidates who are falling far behind.

In Chile’s electoral system, if no candidate secures a 50% majority, the top two candidates will compete in a runoff on December 19.

Outgoing President Sebastian Pinera congratulated Kast and Boric after more than 80% of polling stations reported results late Saturday. The vote comes after a bitter campaign that has caused deep social tensions in the country. There is also the entire 155-seat lower house of the Chilean National Assembly and about half of the Senate.

Boric, 35, will become Chile’s youngest modern president. He was among several student activists elected to Parliament in 2014 after leading protests demanding a higher quality of education. As the head of a broad coalition that includes the Communist Party of Chile, if elected, he said he would raise taxes on the “super-rich” to expand social services and strengthen environmental protection. school.

He also vowed to scrap the country’s private pension system – one of the highlights of free market reforms imposed in the 1980s by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

Kast, 55, of the newly formed Republican Party, emerged from the far right after winning less than 8% of the vote in 2017 as an independent. This time, however, he is slowly rising in the polls with divisive discourse that emphasizes conservative family values ​​as well as attacks on migrants – many from Haiti and Venezuela – he dumps. blame the crime.

An ardent Roman Catholic and father of nine, Kast also took aim at outgoing President Sebastian Pinera for allegedly betraying Pinochet’s economic legacy, whom his brother helped carry out with as president of the dictator’s central bank.

Sebastian Sichel, a centre-right candidate with about 12% of the vote, was the first of the losing candidates to position himself in what is likely to be a heated race, telling supporters argued that in all cases he would vote for the “candidate from the left”, a reference to Boric.

Meanwhile, Yasna Provoste, who finished with the same amount, told her supporters center left that she can never be neutral in the face of “the fascism that Kast represents. face.”

The winner will take over a country in major change but uncertain about its future course after decades of centrist reforms that have largely spared Pinochet’s economic model. .

Voter turnout appeared to be dense on Sunday, with some polling stations having to open after 6 p.m. to accommodate late voters still lining up.

“There were more people than other times because we were all tired of this,” said Marie Arias, 55, who queued to vote.

Teresa Mardones, 60, said she usually votes for the left wing, “but the uncertainty Chile is going through has forced me to vote for Kast.”

But Francisco Venegas, 50, says he went to Boric because “we had to change things and take risks.”

Pinera’s decision to raise metro fares in 2019 sparked months of mass protests, which quickly turned into a nationwide call for more accessible public services and exposing collapsed foundations. of Chile’s “economic miracle”.

Severely weakened by the unrest, Pinera reluctantly agreed with an investigator to rewrite the Pinochet-era constitution. In May, the council responsible for drafting the new magna carta was elected and is expected to conclude its work next year.

Meanwhile, in a new sign of the tensions Pinera will leave behind, the billionaire president was impeached in the lower house before dodging removal by the Senate over a foreign business deal he didn’t agree with. a decade ago his family sold his stake in a mining project while he was serving the first of two non-consecutive terms.

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Goodman reports from Miami

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