On Monday the Chilean Elections Qualifying Tribunal, Tricel, officially proclaimed Gabriel Boric as president-elect of Chile, following his victory in the runoff last 19 December. The ceremony was held at the Tricel offices in Santiago but under the most strict security and sanitary measures given the surge in Covid 19 cases.
By Gwynne Dyer – The right enemy can be a major asset in politics, as Chilean voters have just demonstrated once again. All the opinion polls had the two presidential candidates neck and neck before the election, but a few days before the runoff vote it came out that the father of far-right candidate José Antonio Kast was a Nazi.
The Chilean presidency runoff this Sunday attracted more voters than the first round, November 21, when only 47,34% of the registered electorate turned out. In effect with 99% of votes counted, 56,59% of Chileans went to the polls, a total of 8,252.420 which compares with the 7.115.790 of November.
Leftwing Deputy Gabriel Boric (35) beat first-round frontrunner Conservative José Antonio Kast in Sunday's presidential runoff to become Chile's youngest-ever head of state. After more than 90% of the votes were counted, Boric led by 56% against Kast's 44%.
For decades, Chileans watched from afar as their South American neighbors grappled with galloping inflation, financial crashes, and extreme political swings, destabilizing forces that compelled the wealthy to send hundreds of billions of dollars to havens in Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, or the U.S.
A new survey has shown Conservative candidate José Antonio Kast has narrowed the gap between him and his leftwing opponent Gabriel Boric, who according to most polls, is expected to win the Dec. 19 presidential runoff in Chile.
With just about two weeks to go before the highly-polarized presidential elections between radical candidates from the left and the right, a group claiming to be fighting for the rights of the Mapuche indigenous peoples Friday committed yet another arson attack in the Biobio region in southern Chile. The fire affected a house and two sheds, it was reported.
Chile's far-right presidential candidate José Antonio Kast Friday apologized for previous mistakes and vowed not to terminate the Women's Ministry if he is elected on December 19.
Although long queues at voting places and the delay suffered by many voters gave the impression that last Sunday's election in Chile had triggered a massive attendance, later in the day the Electoral Service figures showed exactly the contrary, just over 7 million Chileans bothered to go and vote for the next Chilean president.
Emilia Schneider Sunday became Chile's first-ever transgender person elected to the national Congress. At age 25, she admitted the LGTBI community was afraid of what may happen if far-right candidate José Antonio Kast wins Dec. 19's presidential runoff.