The outgoing president of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, asked this Sunday that the new president 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 he is, he should never forget that he must be the president of all Chileans, not only of those who supported him”he asserted after casting his vote.
Pinera added that Chile he is “living in 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.
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 he would win the ballot Boric, 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.
Would be second closet, a 55-year-old Catholic lawyer, who seeks to maintain the current neoliberal model with changes, lower taxes, confront irregular migration with a heavy hand and is against gay marriage and all forms of abortion.
Pinera He assured trust 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.
Experts agree that this scenario is plausible, taking into account the large number of voters who were still undecided in the last polls and that only two percentage points separated them in the first round (Kast obtained 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 only 47% of the electoral roll participated.
“We hope to have a democratic, transparent and clean act. We want to hear people’s voices loud and deep “, he expressed.
The next president, who will take office in March 2022 for a period of 4 years, will have to heal the wounds left by the social crisis of 2019; to lead the implementation of the norms of the new Constitution -in case they are approved in an exit plebiscite-, and to face the economic challenges left by the pandemic.
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