The young candidate (just 35 years old) received 55% of the votes when the counting of the votes exceeded two thirds. It promises a break with the policies of its predecessors. The rival of the far right admits defeat
Chile turns left. Gabriel Boric, 35, coalition candidate I approve of Dignity (left) defeated opponent Jos Antonio Kast del Christian Social Front (extreme right). Sar the youngest president of the South American country, the first of the Millennial generation. He will be the president of Chile of all Chileans and not only govern within four walls, he said in a phone call with outgoing president Sebastin Piera. Boric will enter officially in office on March 22nd next year. In the meantime, he has already abandoned the barricadero look, full beard and unkempt hair, which he had not left even after being elected deputy at the age of 27.
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The wait for the result lasted much less than expected, because the head-to-head announced on the eve soon gave way to a gap of ten percentage points (55.86% against 44.14%). And so, already half an hour after the closing of the polling stations, at 6.30 pm local time (11.30 pm in Italy) the controversial leader of the right, of German origin and the son of a Nazi, acknowledged defeat: From today the new president of Chile deserves all our respect, said Kast. Shortly after, Piera also called Boric: I’m sure you will give the best of yourself, he would have told him.
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Immediately after the announcement of Boric’s victory his supporters fell to celebrate in the streets of the capital, Santiago, with songs, choirs and a horn concert, as if for the triumph of a favorite team. And in many cities the symbolic song of Salvador Allende’s era has once again resounded: El pueblo unido jamas ser vencido.
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Thus ends a very tense and very polarized electoral challenge, which saw the two rivals confront each other with no holds barred until the end. The 15 million Chileans called to the polls in the end they chose the former student leader who since 2014 leads a left-wing coalition that brings together the Wide Front and the Communist Party. He presented himself as the man of change and the political heir of the 2019 movement which, before the outbreak of the pandemic, prompted tens of thousands of young people to protest against Piera’s ultra-liberal policies. The massive demonstrations in the autumn of that year resulted in violent clashes with the police and with the death of about thirty people.
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For the first time in three decades, the forces that ruled the country – that is Chile Come on and the former Concertacin – did not come with a candidate in the presidential ballot. Boric got the support of former president Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet in the final duel. His left will be very different from the one that has ruled Chile alternately with the right since the end of General Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1990. And certainly his government to distance itself from the economic policies of the last center-right executive, which has transformed Chile into a kind of laboratory of ultraliberalism.
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Kast had taken the lead in the first round of presidential elections, but his extremist positions – he praised Pinochet on several occasions – have frightened the center and the moderate right. For his part, Boric downplayed the accusations of wanting to follow in the footsteps of Venezuelan Chavismo and instead managed to bring together not only the young and less well-to-do classes but also the middle class and intellectuals, proposing a new model of welfare state, with a strong development of the welfare state, taxes for the super rich and the fight against inequality.
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December 19, 2021 (change December 20, 2021 | 02:22)
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