Chile Votes for a New President on Sunday November 16
The great unknown is where the votes of young people, working-class citizens, and habitual abstainers will go now that voting is mandatory.
HAVANA TIMES – The two favorites for Sunday’s presidential elections in Chile, Communist candidate Jeannette Jara and far-right Jose Antonio Kast, held massive campaign-closing rallies on Tuesday, each drawing thousands of supporters. Both presented themselves as the best option to succeed progressive president Gabriel Boric.
Former Labor Minister under Boric, Jara chose Maipú Square — in the capital’s outskirts and a progressive stronghold — to bathe in popular support and declare that in the November 16 elections, “what’s at stake is not just one candidacy, but a vision for the country’s future.”
“We’re going to make sure every Chilean family can reach the end of the month with peace of mind. That’s my commitment, that’s my hallmark: dignity, decent work, and fair wages,” Jara said, highlighting her flagship promise of a “living wage” of 750,000 pesos (about 800 US dollars at today’s rate).
Most polls predict she will win on November 16 but fall short of the votes needed to secure the presidency outright in the first round.
“In my government, there will not only be greater public safety in neighborhoods,” Jara promised, “but we’ll also follow the money — right where it hurts — along the trail of dirty cash.”
Jara made history last June by winning an open primary and becoming the first member of the Communist Party to represent the entire left and center-left in a presidential race.
Most surveys place Kast in second place, though recent polls show him losing ground and being closely followed — or even overtaken — by libertarian Johannes Kaiser and traditional right-wing candidate Evelyn Matthei.
“It’s us — not anyone else — who have the best chance to defeat the left and take power on March 11,” Kast declared at his closing event at Santiago’s Movistar Arena.
The ultraconservative lawyer and leader of the Republican Party, who lost the 2021 runoff to Boric and took about 8% of the vote in 2017, said he is not running for president a third time “out of ambition or revenge, but out of responsibility.”
“Chile is not doomed to chaos or mediocrity; it is destined for greatness,” said Kast, who advocates a hard line on crime and illegal immigration and proposes an ambitious $6 billion fiscal cut over 18 months.
Both Jara and Kast plan to hold smaller events until Thursday, when campaigning officially ends.
Kaiser will hold his major closing rally on Wednesday in downtown Santiago, while Matthei plans hers for Thursday, also in the capital.
There are four other contenders to succeed Boric, though they have little chance and have already wrapped up or will soon end their campaigns: right-wing populist Franco Parisi; centrist Harold Mayne-Nicholls; independent leftist Marco Enriquez-Ominami; and Eduardo Artes, an open supporter of the North Korean regime, which he has described as a “fully realized people’s democracy.”
These are Chile’s first presidential elections with mandatory voting, which adds uncertainty to the results, as there is a large pool of citizens — mainly young people and working-class voters — who have never participated in presidential elections and whose political leanings are unknown.
This is compounded by a certain “electoral fatigue” in society, since the country has gone to the polls more than a dozen times since the 2019 social uprising, including constitutional, parliamentary, municipal, and presidential processes.
Even so, the candidates are striving both to reach disillusioned voters who have never voted and to retain their loyal bases.
Eilee Soto, a 38-year-old resident of Maipú, said “Jara is a strong leader who knows how to dialogue and make progress.” “She achieved great things for working families as minister, like the pension reform,” she told EFE.
“We know what the right represents in this country, and today Jara is the only one defending democracy, speaking of decent wages and dignified work,” said Silvia Delgado, 54, a few meters away.
Across town in Santiago, Claudia Heinz, a middle-aged woman who attended Kast’s rally with her family, told EFE that “he is a measured person, deeply Catholic, and socially committed in his daily life.”
“There have been many caricatures of Kast,” added Rodrigo Pablo, a 36-year-old lawyer also at the Movistar Arena, “but he’s a serious, honest, and institutional man. He has nothing to do with Milei or Trump.”
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.