three questions about Sunday’s election, dominated by extremes

Difficult to do more polarized. The presidential election in Chile, the second round of which takes place on Sunday, December 19, sees two diametrically opposed candidates clash: Gabriel Boric, described as “to the left of the left”, and José Antonio Kast, his far-right rival, won in the first round. Franceinfo looks back on the eventful campaign which gave rise to this unprecedented election for Chile.

1Who are the two candidates running for the second round?

Of the seven candidates present in the first round, the tenor of the Chilean far right, José Antonio Kast, achieved the best score with 27.95% of the vote, just ahead of the radical left deputy Gabriel Boric, who captured 25.71 % of votes. A historic result for Chile, because since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship and the return to democracy in 1990, the country was exclusively ruled by moderate center-right and center-left parties.

On the far right side, José Antonio Kast is a 55-year-old lawyer and former MP, who heads a populist coalition made up of the Republican Party and the Conservative Christian Party. A fierce opponent of the right to abortion and same-sex marriage (which will be authorized in Chile from March 2022), he defends an ultraliberal economy and said he was nostalgic for the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, responsible for more than 3,000 deaths and countless acts of torture between 1973 and 1990. “We will find peace, order, progress and freedom”, he said on the evening of the first round.

At the other end of the political spectrum, Gabriel Boric is a radical left activist very active during the student demonstrations that rocked Chile in 2011, before supporting the immense wave of social protest that took place at the end of 2019. At 35, he is a deputy without a label but is supported by a broad left-wing coalition, which includes communists, environmentalists and center-left figures. In 2020, he was a key player in organizing the drafting of a new Constitution in order to to replace the current text, unchanged since the dictatorship. Gabriel Boric promises more rights for workers and defends a predominantly social democratic program.

2How did the election campaign go?

The debates in recent months have focused on extremely divisive subjects: abortion, rights of women, natives and homosexuals, memory of the dictatorship, corruption of the political class … Themes addressed both on television sets but also by Chilean parliamentarians, since the right to abortion and same-sex marriage have recently been the subject of legislative proposals – and bitter opposition.

But the passes of arms were sometimes more virulent, especially on the side of José Antonio Kast, who multiplied the personal attacks against Gabriel Boric, going so far as to spread false information. As France 24 noted, the leftist candidate recently had to publish the results of a negative drug test after his rival implicitly accused him of drug use. The camp of the left-wing candidate, exasperated by the unfounded accusations, has repeatedly denounced a “dirty countryside” from José Antonio Kast. The first round suffered from a strong abstention (around 53%), a level however equivalent to that of the 2017 election.

3In what context does this election take place?

The outgoing president, billionaire Sebastian Pinera, who is quoted in the Pandora Papers, is about to leave the reins of a bloodless country. After several years of popular protest and difficult-to-achieve reforms, Chile is in the grip of major political divisions. The aftermath of the October 2019 clashes, between the police and demonstrators contesting an increase in the price of the metro ticket, are still painful. Despite a series of social measures, the authorities fear new waves of protests, such as the one that brought together 1.2 million people in Santiago on October 25, 2019.

In this copper-rich country, but among the most unequal in the world, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), popular protest over access to education and public services is far from over. . And whoever voters choose on Sunday, bringing together such a divided Chile will prove to be an extremely delicate task.