Chile’s leftist former labor minister Jeannette Jara and far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast will go head-to-head in a presidential run-off after topping Sunday’s first round of voting in an election dominated by violent crime.
With 82.97 percent of the results counted, Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of an eight-party coalition, won 26.71 percent, compared to 24.12 percent for Kast, the Servel electoral service said.
The election was dominated by deep concern over a surge in murders, kidnappings and extortion widely blamed on foreign crime gangs.
Kast, 59, has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to keep out migrants from poorer countries to the north, such as Venezuela.
As the results came in, he called for unity and vowed to “rebuild” Chile after four years of center-left rule, which he termed “maybe the worst government in Chile’s democratic history.”
Jara, a minister under outgoing center-left President Gabriel Boric, has promised to hire more police, lift banking secrecy to tackle organized crime and tackle cost-of-living issues.
Her score was several percentage points below pollsters’ predictions, while Kast’s exceeded expectations.
Rodrigo Arellano, an analyst at Chile’s University for Development, called the results “very bad news” for Jara and said it seemed “unlikely” she could win the December 14 run-off.
“Not only is her vote count low, but the combined total of the opposition candidates is almost more than double hers,” he pointed out, blaming anti-incumbent and anti-communist sentiment.
“Don’t let fear harden your hearts,” Jara appealed to voters, insisting that the answer to crime was not to “come up with ideas, each more radical than the next” and hide behind bulletproof glass — a dig at Kast’s draconian campaign security measures.
Maverick economist Franco Parisi caused surprise by finishing third on 19.42 percent, ahead of ultra-right MP Johannes Kaiser on 13.93 percent and former conservative mayor Evelyn Matthei, the establishment choice, on 12.70 percent.
Parisi refrained from backing either Jara or Kast in the run-off, saying that they both needed to go look for new voters “on the street.”
Chileans also voted for members of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate on Sunday.
– Iron fist –
Chile is one of Latin America’s safest countries, but the murder rate has doubled in a decade to exceed that of the United States.
The crime surge has happened in tandem with a doubling of the immigrant population since 2017, now comprising 8.8 percent of the population.
Wall-to-wall news coverage of crime has led to a clamor for a “mano dura” (iron fist).
“I hope that some day we’ll go back to the way we were before,” Mario Faundez, an 87-year-old retired salesman, who voted in the wealthy Santiago district of Providencia, told AFP.
“If we have to kill (criminals), so be it,” he added.
The vote is seen as a litmus test for South America’s left, which has been sent packing in Argentina and Bolivia, and faces a stiff challenge in Colombian and Brazilian elections next year.
The ultraconservative Kast would be the first far-right leader since the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet if elected.
He has defended Pinochet, whose regime killed thousands of dissidents under the pretext of fighting communism during the Cold War.
Patricia Orellana, a 56-year-old Jara voter, said she feared a “rollback of many gains for women” if Kast, who opposes abortion, including in cases of rape, is elected.
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