The outgoing president of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, affirmed this Sunday that the new president should be “the president of all”, during the polarized ballot in which the former left-wing student leader Gabriel Boric and the ultra-conservative José Antonio Kast compete.
“Tonight we are going to have a new president elected by all of you and I believe that whoever is elected should never forget that must be the president of all ChileansNot only those who supported him, “said Piñera after casting his vote at a school in the Las Condes neighborhood of Santiago.
Piñera added that Chile is “experiencing a climate of excessive polarization, confrontation and disputes,” and wished the new president “wisdom, prudence and success”.
“We may have differences, but we all want the best for the country. (…) Chileans have the capacity for dialogue and agreement, but politics seems like a permanent war“, he claimed.
The ultra-conservative José Antonio Kast. Photo: Bloomberg
With two candidates bringing more drastic proposals than those of the large center-right and center-left blocs that have been sharing power for three decades, the next president will be either the most leftist since Salvador Allende (1970-1973) or the most right-wing. since Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
The latest polls anticipate that Boric would win, a 35-year-old deputy -the minimum age to run for office-, in favor of achieving a welfare state with a feminist, environmentalist and regionalist accent.
Kast, a 55-year-old Catholic lawyer, would come second, which seeks to maintain the current neoliberal model with changes, lower taxes, face irregular migration with a heavy hand and is contrary to gay marriage and all forms of abortion.
Piñera assured that he trusted that the results will be known tonight, although he clarified that, if there is a very narrow margin between the candidates, they must be ratified by an electoral tribunal and the process could be delayed.
Former left-wing student leader Gabriel Boric. Photo: Reuter
Experts agree that this scenario is plausible, taking into account the large number of voters who remained undecided in recent polls and that in the first round he only separated them two percentage points (Kast got 27.9% support and Boric 25.8%).
The president concluded with a categorical call to go to the polls, especially after a first round in which he participated barely 47% of the electoral roll.
“We hope to have a democratic, transparent and clean act. We want to hear the voice of the people strong and deep,” he said.
The next president, who will take office in March 2022 for a period of four years, will have to heal the wounds left by the social crisis of 2019; lead the implementation of the norms of the new Constitution – if approved in an exit plebiscite – and face the economic challenges left by the pandemic.
With information from EFE.
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