By Anthony Esposito and Natalia A Ramos Miranda — Reuters, Sunday 19 December 2021
SANTIAGO, 19 December (Reuters) — Chilean leftist Gabriel Boric won the country’s presidential runoff election on Sunday, capping a major revival for the country’s progressive left that has been on the rise since widespread protests roiled the Andean country two years ago. With over 99% of ballots counted, Boric, 35, who leads a broad leftist coalition, had 55.86% of the vote compared with 44.14% for far-right rival Jose Antonio Kast, who conceded defeat.
“I am going to be the president of all Chileans,” Boric said. In downtown Santiago, supporters cheered, embraced and waved flags as well as rainbow flags of LGBT groups that have backed his socially inclusive policies and plans to overhaul Chile’s market-orientated economic model. Kast said on Twitter: “I just spoke to @gabrielboric and congratulated him on his great success. From today he is the elected President of Chile and he deserves all our respect and constructive collaboration. Chile is always first.”
The protests in 2019 shone a spotlight on economic inequality and triggered an official redraft of the constitution. Boric rose to prominence leading a student protest in 2011 to demand better and more affordable education, and wrote in an open letter that his government would make the changes Chileans had demanded in the 2019 social uprisings — including “having a real social security system that doesn’t leave people behind, ending the hateful gap between healthcare for the rich and healthcare for the poor, advancing without hesitation in freedoms and rights for women.”
Analysts noted Boric faced a complex period ahead and would need to negotiate with the opposition due to a split Congress where neither side has a majority. The election was the nation’s most divisive in decades. Both candidates were from outside the centrist political mainstream that has ruled Chile since the return to democracy in 1990 after Pinochet’s military dictatorship, and both moderated their positions in recent weeks to win over centrist voters.