The first round of the presidential election takes place on Sunday, November 21, in an uncertain and polarized context, marked by the breakthrough of the far-right candidate José Antonio Kast.
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In the golden sunset on the outskirts of Santiago, the supporters of José Antonio Kast agitated the Chilean star flag – very present at the end-of-camp campaign meeting, Thursday, November 18 -, and exult To the song of “we feel coming, kast president!”
“This is the only person who can put order in the country and solve the problems of insecurity,” enthuses Laura Rodriguez, a 35-year-old engineer in the famous Chic Las Condes, where stands The gathering, sporting a fabric mask stamped with a “kast, launch yourself”. While the thrilling crowd at the rate of the injunction “which does not jump is communist”, Fernanda Lagos, a 37-year-old human resources framework, explains the reasons for his vote in the first round of the presidential election of Sunday 21 November: “Kast is a person who has authority, character, who will give weight to the armed forces. He is father of nine children, he is an entrepreneur, he knows how to run a country.”
The 55-year-old José Antonio Kast’s lawyer, admirer of the dictator Augusto Pinochet but refusing the far-right label, operated a dazzling breakthrough in the surveys in recent weeks. From Fourth Man – and Telling Yasna Provoste (left center), the only presidential candidate woman to the seven contenders – he became one of the two favorites of the first round, alongside the left candidate, Gabriel Boric. It is such a volatile panorama that precedes this ballot, in many ways totally unpublished since the return to democracy in 1990.
Relationship with the Constituent Assembly
For the first time, the political landscape is not structured by the left-center clock-right center – represented for this election by the Sebastian SIICHEL – candidate who has rhythmous presidential mandates for more than thirty years. It is, moreover, the first presidential election since the movement against the inequalities of 2019, which has profoundly reformulated the trajectory of the country, particularly with the election of a constituent assembly currently planning on a new basic law. In the light of the elected constituents program, the Magna Carta to replace the text inherited from the dictatorship (1973-1990), should endorse the social rights required by the street.
“These are extremely important elections in the sense that the next president will define the relationship with this assembly: will he go in the direction of his work, as Gabriel Boric would do? Or will he go Place in a logic of confrontation, as José Antonio Kast would do? “, wonders Julieta Suarez Cao, Politist at the Catholic University of Chile. Like many experts, she invites to apprehend polls with caution. These have regularly failed in their forecasts, in the last ballot.
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