Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Thursday, November 18, 2021

Chile elects president on Sunday amid uncertainty over outcome

The voters, 15 million people, will have to choose between seven candidates. There are 50% undecided. The favorites to go to the second round are the leftist Gabriel Boric and the rightist José Antonio Kast.

Fifteen million Chileans will go to the polls next Sunday the 21st to elect a president for the period 2022-2026. Legislators for both houses will also be voted. Due to the Chilean electoral system and the current party and political fragmentation, it is very likely that there will be a second round, on December 19. In the latest polls there was talk of up to 50% undecided.

The elections are held within the framework of the existence of a constituent assembly that debates the scope of a reform of the Magna Carta. Likewise, that assembly is the daughter of the mobilizations that has shaken the country since October 2019.

The polls are inclined towards a result that will derive in the second round between two opponents: one from the right and the other from the left. In this table, the center-right, represented by the official candidate, would not have a chance to pass the round.

After the primaries of July 18, the names of the candidates of each party were defined: Sebastián Sichel (We are going through Chile), José Antonio Kast (Christian Social Front), Yasna Provoste (New Social Pact), Gabriel Boric (Approve Dignity), Franco Parisi (People's Party), Eduardo Artés (Patriotic Union) and Marco Enríquez-Ominami (PRO).

The candidates have appealed to an intensive use of social networks to gain followers. They have been shown there in informal postures, climbing trees (Boric) or dancing rap (Kast). In this sense, the campaign in general has been more intense in the emotional and less in the debate of ideas. And social networks have been used in that sense.

In these elections, a large part of the Parliament will also be renewed, with the election of 155 deputies for the next four years and 27 of 43 senators for the next eight.

Stage. The ruling party is represented by Chile Vamos, a coalition that groups together four center-right and right-wing parties –UDI, RN, Evópoli and PRI–, and whose candidate is Sebastián Sichel, who was Minister of Social Development of the current president, Sebastián Piñera. Sichel arrives at the elections hit by allegations of illegal financing of previous electoral campaigns, which led to the resignation of his campaign manager, and alternatively occupying the third and fourth positions in the polls.

The two candidates with the best chances of accessing the second round are the right-wing Kast and the left-wing Boric. In the last television debate, last Monday, both candidates engaged in personal accusations about each other's past. Kast was also highly criticized by the rest of the candidates for defending the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

Kast is also criticized for his position against equal marriage and abortion. Regarding the first, he affirmed that there is a "gay lobby" that aims to influence people and assured that an educational program that shows homoparental families is "indoctrination." And in relation to the second, he considers that it is a crime against innocents. In the last debate, Boric said that in Kast's electoral program "there are a series of discriminatory acts that put substantial advances in human rights at risk."

ICT program. Boric has spoken out in favor of promoting digital rights as a social guide to eliminate the digital divide. The related group that acts in the Constituent Assembly has presented several projects in this regard. It vindicates the advances in the metrics in the country, such as the start of 5G. It also aims to the creation of a state telecommunications company, which operates a new fiber optic backbone. It should be noted that in Chile there is already a backbone network in full deployment by private companies that won the bids.

Kast, on the other hand, hates telecommunications regulation and is a loyal defender of free market in the matter. For this candidate, state action should aim to target state digitization at all levels, which makes life easier for people and companies and encourages research, along with modern regulation that stimulates private investment.

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