we present you the four favorites for the second round

Two years after an unprecedented social uprising against social inequality, the Chileans must nominate the successor of Sebastián Piñera. Some 15 million people are called to the polls on Sunday, November 21, to decide between seven presidential candidates. While voters must also renew the entire Chamber of Deputies, half of the Senate, as well as the regional councils, franceinfo returns to the four contenders in the second round of the presidential election.

>> REPORT. “A post-May 68 moment in Chile” : voters vote to elect their future president

Gabriel Boric, the young left-wing deputy

A favorite in the polls with around 25% of the voting intentions, Gabriel Boric is the youngest candidate to run for president in Chile. A 35-year-old deputy, this former student leader has aspired since university to make his country a “welfare state”. At the head of the left coalition “Apruebo Dignidad”, he believes that the democracy in which he grew up did not modify the ultra-liberal economic model established under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

Gabriel Boric abandoned his rebellious student style, thick beard and long hair, to endorse the image of a more consensual politician. But his detractors blame him for his inexperience and his proximity to the Communists, members of the coalition. If he becomes president, he hears “guarantee a welfare state so that everyone has the same rights, regardless of the money in their wallet”.

José Antonio Kast, the far-right populist

In the polls, he is neck and neck with Gabriel Boric while he is at the other end of the political spectrum. José Antonio Kast refused during the campaign to be labeled a far-right, despite his sympathies for Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, former US President Donald Trump and the Spanish Vox party. This 55-year-old lawyer does not hide his admiration for the dictatorship either.

Activist for 20 years in the ultra-conservative party of the Independent Democratic Union, Jose antonio kast created in 2019 the Republican Party under the banner of which he is running for the second time in the presidential election. In 2017, it came in fourth position (7.93%).

Married, father of nine children, he is an active member of a conservative Catholic movement. His family of German immigrants, settled in Santiago since 1951, made their fortune in the production of sausages and a chain of restaurants. Its liberal economic program proposes to reduce public spending, reduce taxes, keep the much maligned pension plan by capitalization and eliminate several ministries, including that of the Status of Women.

Yasna Provoste, the only woman in the race

Center-left Senator Yasna Provoste is the only woman among seven candidates. The 51-year-old has gained popularity as President of the Senate by lobbying the government for an increase in social assistance during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A gymnastics teacher, she had been Minister of Education under Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), before being dismissed by Parliament in 2008 for mismanagement and excluded from politics for five years. His victory in the primary of his Christian Democracy party sounded like revenge. This mother of two claims her origins as “diaguita”, an indigenous people in northern Chile.

“I am the heir to a coalition which governed our country for thirty years. (…) We had inherited a country with 40% poverty (…) which we reduced to 3%”, she emphasizes in her speeches.

Sebastian Sichel, heir to Piñera

Whoever did not succeed in being elected as a deputy in 2013 claims to be a pure product of the “Chilean dream” after a difficult childhood under the dictatorship. Ruling party candidate Sebastian Sichel, 44, is posing as a “liberal from the center”. Former director of the Central Bank and former Minister of Social Development under Sebastian Piñera, he had created a surprise by winning the primary of the right.

Favorable to the free market, with a strong representation of small and medium-sized enterprises, he wishes to combine it with a State with reinforced prerogatives. “We shouldn’t have a complex with the state like the old right, but we should also understand the value of entrepreneurship, of innovation.”, he emphasizes.