Former student demonstration leader Gabriel Boric wins Chilean election

Gabriel Boric, former director of student exhibitions, has won the final competition ChilePresidential election as the country shifted to the left after several years of unrest.

With more than half of the votes counted, the results show that Boric, a member of the coalition with the Communist Party of Chile, received 55% of the vote on Sunday, ahead of his main rival, José Antonio Kast. at 45 percent. The winner will start work in March next year.

Kast, a 55-year-old former Congressman and father of nine, admitted defeat Sunday and thanked Boric for his “great victory”.

“From today [Boric] is the president of Chile and he deserves to be honored by our inspiring alliance, “ Kast wrote in a tweet when Boric’s supporters began gathering in the city of Santiago.

The 35-year-old Boric, who staged protests over the past decade at street protests against inequality in education, is the first person out of politics to rule Chile since its return to democracy in 1990.

He is also Chile’s last president in more than 200 years and the first to win a second term after defeating Kast in the first round of voting on November 21.

“Chile needs to change a lot and Kast is not going to change anything,” said Rodrigo Vergara, 28, outside the polling station in Santiago.

At his meeting Kast spoke out against immigration, same-sex marriage and abortion, and pledged to restore peace under his new Republican party.

Boric cast his ballot Sunday in his hometown of Punta Arenas, in the south of the country, telling voters that, if elected, his leadership would lead to a new kind of politics.

“We are a new generation entering politics with clean hands, a warm heart and a cool head. We are determined to make Chile a more humane, better and more equitable place,” he said.

During his campaign as part of the left-wing coalition, Boric vowed to give up pension jobs and bury what the country was “neoliberal” market-related that had failed to reduce social divisions.

With this decision “Chile has really changed”, Eugenio Tironi, a Chilean sociologist, told the Financial Times. He also said that the militias that have ruled the country since 1990, “have been relocated to a second location, and new alliances have been formed under the new leadership”.