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Chilean leftist Gabriel Boric won the country’s presidential runoff election on Sunday, as far-right rival Jose Antonio Kast conceded defeat with results showing a nearly 10-point gap between the deeply polarized candidates.
With over 83% of votes counted, Boric had 55.52% versus Kast’s 44.48%, and his lead appeared to be widening.
“I just spoke to @gabrielboric and congratulated him on his great success,” Kast said on Twitter. “From today he is the elected President of Chile and he deserves all our respect and constructive collaboration. Chile is always first.”
Acabo de hablar con @gabrielboric y lo he felicitado por su gran triunfo. Desde hoy es el Presidente electo de Chile y merece todo nuestro respeto y colaboración constructiva. Chile siempre está primero 🇨🇱✌️ pic.twitter.com/AvpBKs0GFT
— José Antonio Kast Rist 🇨🇱 (@joseantoniokast) December 19, 2021
The victory caps a major comeback for Chile’s progressive left since widespread protests in 2019 shone a spotlight on inequality in the country’s market-orientated economic model and triggered an official redraft of the constitution.
“I want real change,” said Lucrecia Cornejo, 72, a seamstress waiting in line to vote for Boric, the candidate for a broad leftist front. She cited inequalities in education, pensions and healthcare that Boric has pledged to fix.
“I want equality, for us not to be as they call us the ‘broken ones,’ more fairness in education, health and salaries.”
The election was the nation’s most divisive in decades, with the two candidates offering starkly different visions from pensions and privatization to human rights.
Boric, a 35-year-old former student protest leader whose coalition includes the Communist Party, was up against Kast, 55, a law-and-order candidate and defender of former dictator Augusto…
Source : france24
