Chile before a close presidential election with the entire political spectrum in the arena

On Chile There are 15 million voters, half of them undecided, summoned next Sunday to elect the successor of Sebastian Piñera among seven candidates, from the extreme left to the extreme right, in one of the most uncertain elections in 31 years of democracy.

On Sunday there are also votes for 155 deputies, 27 of the 43 senators and regional councilors. It will be the fourth election since 2020 to be held in Chile, which is going through a period of change since the harsh social unrest in October 2019.

Representatives of the two most antagonistic political poles arrive as favorites: the deputy of the Left Broad Front Gabriel Boric, the youngest applicant in history at 35, and far-right lawyer and politician Jdared Antonio Kast, 55 and from the Republican Party.

But in a scenario without solid polls, and whose dissemination has been prohibited by law for 15 days, the candidacies of the candidate of the right-wing coalition in the Government, Sebastián Sichel (44), and the only woman, senator and former minister of Michelle Bachelet, Christian Democrat Yasna Provoste (51).

“The right proposes order without changes and Boric, changes without order, both lead us to uncertainty,” Provoste closed Monday in a debate.

She presents herself as the proud “heir” of the Concertación, the center-left coalition that governed much of the 31 years of democracy after the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), now disintegrated.

“Since the plebiscite of 1988 (which decided the departure of Pinochet) I did not feel this uncertainty,” said Silvia Gutiérrez, a 60-year-old nurse who works in Santiago and lives in Melipilla, a country community in the metropolitan region 70 km from the center. capital.

In Gutiérrez’s family “we always vote for the Concertación, and now we are all divided: there are from the right to the left, but none of the extremes,” he points out in a reflection of the political division in the country and the stage open for this Sunday.

“There is a distortion produced by the mediocrity of politics, a degradation of politics,” said analyst and pollster Marta Lagos, executive director of Latinobarómetro, explaining the lack of reliable polls and the rise of the extreme right.

This Thursday the campaigns of the seven presidential candidates will close and voters are called to vote between 11:00 GMT and 21H00 GMT on Sunday.

Hinge moment

Since 2012, when Chile established the voluntary vote, electoral participation has been low. For this reason, electoral analysts estimate that there will be a second round on December 19.

The presidential election, in addition to being unpredictable, takes place in the middle of the drafting of a new Constitution, a rise in inflation of up to 6%, and a collapse of the traditional parties as a reflection of a crisis of general institutional confidence.

Thus, Chile is the last destination of the wave of far-right populism with Kast, who vindicates the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and has shown harmony with the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro and the American Donald Trump.

His message promises to restore social order and maintain the economic model that made Chile a prosperous country, but with an inequality that fractures its society.

“I believe that Kast is the least dangerous option for Chile, we are already experiencing the horror that the extreme left can be,” said Andreína Guillén, a Venezuelan commercial agent who has worked for 12 years in a multinational pharmaceutical company in Santiago.

In Chile, where Venezuelans and Peruvians make up the first and second foreign communities, some 400,000 people can vote for residents with more than five years in the country, according to the Electoral Service.

“There are things to correct, but we cannot ignore the country’s progress in democracy. I am afraid of the left, ”admits Hugo Pizarro, a 45-year-old bank official from Chile, who will vote for Sichel.

– Chaos vs Order –

An important part of the 19 million inhabitants supports since 2019 the demand for a State present in social issues, better access to education and public health, and changing the pension system in the hands of private funds.

But the most violent expressions, with vandalism in the protests and speeches of the extreme left, boosted the rise of the right in recent months.

“It is like a kind of outbreak of authoritarianism, just as the left exploded through the social explosion, now the counter-reform is coming, which is what happens in the great transformations of countries,” says Marta Lagos.

In his analysis, Lagos recalls that since the end of the dictatorship “that authoritarianism was there”, with 40% of Pinochetists in the 1990s now around 20%.

Since 1999, the presidential elections in Chile have been defined in the second round.