left-wing candidate Gabriel Boric elected new president of the country

Triumph for the left coalition. Gabriel Boric was officially elected President of the Republic of Chile on Sunday, December 19. The left-wing candidate won in the second round with 55.87% of the vote against 44.13% for José Antonio Kast, his far-right opponent, who won in the first round. More than a million votes separate the two contenders (4.6 against 3.6). Turnout exceeds 55%, an all-time high since voting was no longer compulsory in 2012.

Came first in the first round with 27.9% of the vote, repeating that he was the candidate of “order, justice and security”, José Antonio Kast congratulated his opponent: “He deserves all our respect, a lot of Chileans have trusted him”, he said after admitting his defeat on his account Twitter. It is a real triumph for the left coalition, of which the Communist Party is a member, in this unprecedented duel since the return to democracy in 1990 between two candidates with diametrically opposed social projects.

It is with his welfare state project, a change of magnitude in the country considered as the laboratory of liberalism in Latin America, that Gabriel Boric wins by rallying around him the middle to upper middle class, mainly to Santiago. Gabriel Boric, 35 years old and youngest president of Chile, intends to promote a major tax reform to involve the richest in his program of better access to health, education and the creation of a new pension system, now completely private. Chile is the most unequal country in the OECD.