It’s a landslide victory for Gabriel Boric. The leftist candidate won the second round of the presidential election in Chile on Sunday, a victory officially recognized by his far right opponent, José Antonio Kast.
The left coalition, of which the Communist Party is a member, thus easily wins this duel unprecedented since the return to democracy in 1990 between two candidates with diametrically opposed societal projects. According to the final official results, Gabriel Boric, who, at 35, was just old enough to run, won with nearly 56% of the vote against 44% for José Antonio Kast, an admirer of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet supported by the whole of the Chilean right.
Participation in the highest
Above all, turnout is approaching 55%, an all-time high since voting is no longer compulsory in 2012. In the first round, it was 47%, when José Antonio Kast came in first (27.9% against 25 , 8%), by seducing in the upscale districts of Santiago and among the popular classes outside the capital, and by repeating that he was the candidate of “order, justice and security”.
But it is with his welfare state project, a change of scale 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, essentially in Santiago. He intends to promote a major tax reform to involve the richest – including the 1% of Chileans holding 26.5% of the wealth, according to a UN agency – in his program for better access to health, education and the creation of a new pension system, now entirely private.
Horns and big party
Outgoing President Sebastian Pinera, on the right of the political spectrum, congratulated in a video discussion the new elected head of state who will officially take office on March 11. A concert of horns also sounded in the streets of the capital immediately after José Antonio Kast admitted his defeat. And, a big party is preparing to last all night in Santiago as the return of a certain form of the Pinochet years was feared among the population.