Chile, center-left candidate Gabriel Boric wins the presidential elections. Record of participation in the ballot

The victory of Gabriel Boric it was clear-cut and took shape right from the scrutiny of the first seats. In percentage terms, the young candidate on the left has grown from 26 to 56% and the candidate on the right Jose Antonio Kast from 28 to 44%. The television summaries point out that Boric at 35 is the youngest elected president in the history of Chile and it is also the President who got the most votes because the percentage of people who voted exceeded 56%.

It seems little by European standards, but it is a participation that has gone beyond what was believed to be the record, that is, last year’s referendum on the start of the constituent process. Boric won because he led, or brought back to the polls, many Chileans who did not go to the first round. Evidently the ballot was considered by the voters a sort of referendum. Although Jose Antonio Kast has moderated the tones from as much as possible extreme right-wing fundamentalist that characterized his political rise, he was however seen as the current heir of pinochetism, a ghost still alive in Chile, and as an enemy ofsocial outbreak and the constituent process.

The 35-year-old MP from the Broad Front he was able to mobilize the most movement-oriented sectors but also the moderate center-left ones who want to avoid disorder and destabilization. He triumphed in the Metropolitan Region and in the Valparaiso Region, the most populous in the country, but he also increased his votes in the Northern and Southern regions, completely neutralizing the support that the third candidate, Franco Parisi, he had given at the last moment to Jose Antonio Kast.

Election day was characterized by the controversy over the scarcity of public transport in popular neighborhoods (the polling stations in Chile are sometimes very far from the voters’ residence, absolutely not reachable on foot, ed). But the fears of Boric supporters about the lost votes due to the few buses were allayed by the first results. Very soon, in a real anxiety of institutional etiquette, Kast acknowledged the defeat, called Boric and went to visit him at the Fundador Hotel. President Sebastian Piñera, who remains in office until 11 March, congratulated the winner. But a few minutes later Boric took the stage which had been optimistically mounted on the Alameda. He touched on all issues dear to him, children, women, working hours, pensions, public health and education, the environment, water, human rights and obviously the defense of the work of the Constituent Assembly. . But he spoke as “president of all”, who considers the balance of forces in the new Parliament as an opportunity rather than a limit, and who will create an open government. Then the concert started. The victory was also celebrated in many other squares.

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