The Conservative caste has accepted the leftist Boric in his return to the presidency of Chile

By Anthony Esposito and Natalia A. Ramos Miranda

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Chile’s left-wing Gabriel Boric won the country’s presidential election on Sunday as far-right rival Jose Antonio Kast admitted defeat, with results showing a nearly 10-point lead over polarized candidates.

With more than 83% of the vote counted, Boric won 55.52% over Kasten’s 44.48%, and his lead seemed to be widening.

“I spoke to @ gabrielboric and congratulated him on his great success,” Kaste said on Twitter (NYSE :). “From today he is elected president of Chile and deserves all our respect and constructive cooperation. Chile is always first.”

The victory has led to a major return for Chile’s progressive left, as protests in 2019 sparked a focus on inequality in the country’s market-oriented economic model and led to a formal overhaul of the constitution.

“I want real change,” said 72-year-old Lucrecia Cornejo, a tailor who is waiting to vote in the queue for Boric, a candidate for a broad left-wing front. He mentioned the differences in education, pensions and health that Boric is committed to resolving.

“I want equality, so we don’t have to be ‘broken’ as we are told, more fair in education, health and wages.”

Elections were one of the biggest divisions in the nation in decades, with both candidates offering completely different perspectives from pensions and privatization to human rights.

Boric https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/student-leader-president-chiles-boric-eyes-historic-election-win-2021-12-15, 35-year-old former student protest leader. coalition includes Communist Party, opposed to Kast https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chiles-bolsonaro-hard-right-kast-rises-with-frank-talk-crime-focus-2021-11- 16, 55, deputy candidate and defender of former dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Kast, who has been paired with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and has become the hero of Chile’s “unforgiving right”, said in an open letter on Saturday that “two models of the nation are at odds.”

Both candidates come from outside the centrist political current that has prevailed since Chile returned to democracy in 1990 after the years of Pinochet’s military dictatorship. Both moderated their positions in recent weeks to win centrist voters.

“It’s not that I’m 100% Boric, but now it’s time to decide between two opposing options and Boric is my choice,” said Javier Morales, a 29-year-old construction worker.

Florencia Vergara, a 25-year-old dental student, accepted Kast as a “lesser evil” to the economy. “I like his proposals on economic issues, even though I disagree with all of his political ideals,” he said. “But Chile needs a little order.”

THE GHOST OF PINOCHETA

Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online. He is credited with boosting economic growth, but has been attacked for creating sharp divisions between the rich and the poor.

Kaste defends Pinochet’s legacy and attacks Boric in his left-wing coalition for his alliance with the Communist Party, which has resonated with fans https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/the-coup-destroyed-us-memories -pinochet-resonate-chiles-crossroads-election-2021-12-17. Some caste voters shouted that Chile “will never be Marxist” on Sunday.

“I accept Jose Antonio Kast because he is a just man,” Marisol Araneda, a 49-year-old fruit and vegetable trader, said on Sunday as he went to the polls, adding that Boric feared he would take the country in the direction of socialist Venezuela.

Boric, who led a student protest in 2011 to demand better and cheaper education, wrote in an open letter that his government would make the changes demanded by Chileans in 2019 in broad social uprisings.

“(That means) having a real social security system that doesn’t leave people behind, ending a hateful disruption between the health of the rich and the health of the poor, certainly advancing women’s freedoms and rights,” she said.

The 2019 protests, which lasted for months and sometimes turned violent, sparked a formal process to rewrite Chile’s decades-old constitution, a text that will hold a referendum next year.

Businessman Jorge Valdivia, a 54-year-old Boric supporter, said the vote was a chance for the country to close a chapter on the past.

“We can close the dark, harmful and abusive model that has benefited a small minority,” he said.

EXPLANATORY-‘Communism vs. Fascism? ‘ Chile is ready for the polarized presidential runoff

STUDY-In Chilean polarized elections, sharp divisions offer investors a silver

FACTBOX-Chilean presidential candidate on mining, pensions and LGBT rights

Boric vs Kast https://tmsnrt.rs/3ytn6VG

Boric vs Kast (interactive version) https://tmsnrt.rs/3m9CzVO

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