Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime.
More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right.
The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties.
Photo: AFP
A recent poll by the Cadem research institute showed far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast, who lost to Boric in the presidential run-off in 2021, leading the race with 17 percent of voting intentions, followed former Providencia mayor Evelyn Matthei on 16 percent.
The poll showed Jara running in third on 8 percent, ahead of Toha in fourth and another far-right candidate, Johannes Kaiser, in fifth.
Boric is barred by Chile’s constitution from seeking a second consecutive term. His coalition is the only bloc to hold an open primary. The other parties designated their candidates internally.
Polls showed rising levels of violent crime, in what was once one of Latin America’s safest countries, uppermost among voter concerns.
The murder rate has shot from 2.32 murders per 100,000 in 2012 to 6.0 last year.
Kast was polling strongly among working-class Chileans, on a message of cracking down hard on crime and drug trafficking.
Toha, a center-left political scientist, was in charge of leading the government’s response to the crime wave before she resigned in March to run for president.
Jara, a 51-year-old lawyer and Communist Party activist who served as Boric’s labor minister until April, goes into the primary with two major reforms to her name.
She lowered the working week from 45 to 40 hours, a campaign promise of Boric, and transformed the pension system, which was completely privatized, into a mixed public-private regime.
Winter, a 38-year-old former student leader like Boric, represents the Broad Front party, while Mulet, 61, represents a small ecologist party. Both are lawyers.
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