The streets of Santiago on Sunday erupted in celebration after leftist millennial Gabriel Boric became Chile’s youngest president-elect with an unexpectedly large victory over his far-right rival in a polarizing race.
Boric, 35, garnered nearly 56 percent of the vote compared with 44 percent for Jose Antonio Kast, who conceded even before the final result was known.
Tens of thousands of Chileans took to the streets of the capital and other cities after Kast’s concession, honking horns in approval, brandishing pro-Boric placards, waving the rainbow LGBTQ flag and shouting: “Viva Chile.”
Photo: AFP
Fireworks lit the skies for hours.
“I’m thrilled, I am crying with joy. We dealt a blow to fascism,” pharmacy worker Jennie Enriquez, 45, said.
“I am happy because there are going to be many changes that will help the people and the working class,” construction worker Luis Astorga, 58, added.
Boric had campaigned on the promise of installing a “social welfare” state, increasing taxes and social spending in a nation with one of the world’s largest gaps between rich and poor.
Branded a “communist” by his detractors, he vowed in his first official address to “expand social rights” in Chile, but to do so with “fiscal responsibility.”
“We will do it protecting our macroeconomy, we will do it well ... to improve pensions and healthcare,” he said.
Kast congratulated Boric, who leads an alliance that includes Chile’s Communist Party, “on his great triumph.”
“From today on, he is the president-elect of Chile, and he deserves all our respect and constructive cooperation. Chile always comes first,” he said.
Kast is an apologist for brutal Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and his neo-liberal economic model, credited with Chile’s relative wealth, but blamed for its deep-rooted social inequality.
He opposes same-sex marriage, contraception and abortion, and had initially pledged to close the Chilean Ministry of Women’s Affairs, a promise he later rowed back on.
According to a projection by Chile’s Servel election body, turnout was more than 55 percent — a record since voting became voluntary in 2012.
Boric won by a margin of nearly 1 million ballots out of 8.3 million cast by 15 million eligible voters.
“Clearly more young people came out, it seems clear ... that Boric managed to mobilize the segment that is more difficult to mobilize, which is the segment of young people,” Claudia Heiss of the University of Chile said.
“All [Kast’s] anti-rights, anti-women, anti-gay speech, I think it helped mobilize that young segment,” she said.
The new president faces the difficult task of healing a society reeling from a polarizing campaign replete with antagonistic attacks and fake news onslaughts.
For a nation that has voted centrist since the democratic ousting of Pinochet 31 years ago, it was a stark choice between two polar opposite political outsiders.
Boric on Sunday reiterated his plans for “a more humane Chile, a more dignified Chile, a more egalitarian Chile.”
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