Kast, Boric meets for Chilean presidential election | Election Issues

Antofagasta, Chile – From the arid desert of Atacama in the north, to Antarctica, Chileans are voting for their next president in a contested election.

Saturday – when the election opened at 8am (11:00 GMT) and closed at 6pm (21:00 GMT) – includes Jose Antonio Kast, a pro-democracy activist, against Gabriel Boric, a progressive democrat. promoting human justice.

Results are expected within hours of voting.

In last month’s primary election, 47.3 percent of Chile’s 15 million registered voters participated.

This time, voters began to show up when voting opened instead of waiting until noon as they did last month.

Boric, a 35-year-old secretary and student rights activist, pledged to reform the pension system, promote LGBTQ and women’s rights, address climate change and increase mining taxes and corporate taxes.

Kast, a 55-year-old lawyer and former Congressman, has called for security, lowering the government, and tax cuts to boost funding.

His anti-LGBTQ reputation and respect for Pinochet have ruined his campaign.

“I voted for Kast,” Juan Diaz, 73, told Al Jazeera after casting his ballot at a local school in Antofagasta, more than 1,300km (808 miles) north of Santiago.

“Capital brings health. I’ll go where the money is.”

Luis Perez, 29, said that people have been using social networking sites to express their views on elections, even though some have been promoting hatred.

“I’m going to vote for Boric,” Perez said. “I think of the whole world.”

At present, the gap between deportations has been greater than ever before.

Since the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship of 1973-90, Chile has been ruled by blocs closer to the political capital than the Kast and Boric alliances.

The winners will hold the position for four years from March next year. He or she will be in the forefront of the process of preparing for the by-elections on the constitution of the country, which representatives of the elected citizens are in the process of drafting.

The Constitutional Convention was the culmination of a series of major protests against systematic inequality in 2019.

Boric supported the reform of the dictatorship, which Kast protested.

Sunday voter turnout, especially for young voters, can be difficult. Kast had the opportunity to have more than 50 voters, while voters under the age of 30 prefer Boric.

Chilean presidential spokesman Gabriel Boric poses for a photo with his supporters at a polling station in Punta Arenas, Chile. [Juan Carlos Avendano/Reuters]

“The electoral process has gathered a large number of people,” said Beatriz Vega, a member of the Red de Politologas, a group of women political analysts.

“At least in Boric’s campaign, he noticed that the youth vote was declining and I would say that in this second phase the popular television campaign is looking at the people.

“In Kast’s case, I think it’s hard to see what he did because he was never in the public eye.”