With Chile’s presidential campaign virtually paralyzed by Covid-19 18 days before the election, a poll shows left-wing candidates Gabriel Boric and ultra-right José Antonio Kast in a tight race for leadership.
The Criteria survey released on Thursday (4) indicates Boric with 24% and Kast with 23% of the voting intentions to be Sebastián Piñera’s successor. In the Data Influye survey, published on Wednesday (3), the difference is a little bigger, with the leftist leading with 32%, followed by the conservative with 27%.
Amid the fierce dispute between the two presidential candidates, six of the seven candidates had to paralyze their campaigns after Boric received the positive result for Covid-19. According to people close to him, the leftist, who has already been vaccinated, only has a fever.
Although the other candidates have not been diagnosed with the disease either, restrictions in Chile require that anyone who has met someone infected be isolated for seven days — quarantine then became mandatory for those who participated in a debate last year. Monday (1st), in Santiago, for example, which Boric attended.
The only candidate not affected is economist Franco Parisi, who lives in the US and campaigns there.
After the leftist’s case, press conferences were transferred to the virtual environment, and trips were eventually cancelled. This Thursday, the candidates participated in a new debate, in digital format, in a forum on government and city development.
One of those impacted by isolation is precisely Boric’s main rival. Kast, who soared in the polls after the Sept. 22 debate, guaranteed in a video posted on a social network that he would follow sanitary standards. “Hope to see you again soon.”
The right-wing lawyer campaign already had a strong online presence. The candidate invested in a strong strategy on social media, which includes answering questions from voters, doing dances and showing the campaign throughout the country on TikTok.
Kast, who ran for president in 2017 and received 8% of the vote, is known for his phrases praising Chile’s dictatorship, has become a leading critic of the country’s Constituent Assembly, and advocates an anti-immigration platform.
Governmentist Sebastian Sichel — who made the opposite movement to Kast in the polls, in free fall — stated in a social network that he will share his proposals online, but has already announced his return to the streets for next Tuesday (9).
Sichel suffers from the wear and tear of the current president, Sebastián Piñera, and appears today with less than 10% of voting intentions. In the Criteria survey, the Christian Democrat senator Yasna Provoste currently occupies the third position (9%), followed by the government and Parisi, both with 8%, and then by Marco Enríquez-Ominami (6%) and Eduardo Artés (2 %).
To be elected in the first round, which takes place on November 21, a candidate must win more than 50% of the votes, a scenario that is proving increasingly difficult. The election will also decide the new members of Congress and of 16 regional councils. A likely presidential run-off is scheduled for December 19, and the new president takes office on March 11, 2022.
One of the challenges that are already shaping up for the future are land conflicts. The clashes between the State and the Mapuche indigenous peoples went beyond the Patagonia region and played a central role in the campaigns.
Kast calls the Mapuche protesters terrorists and defends the use of the Armed Forces in land clearances. Boric, on the other hand, states that “there is a lot to learn from the Mapuche”. The leftist, in the campaign, had been traveling to southern Chile and promising that, if elected, he would recognize the sovereignty of that people and implement policies of inclusion.
The Mapuche population has inhabited the region known as Araucania since the 5th century, long before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors. Although there are several tribes and branches, these indigenous people share a strong common identity in clothing, customs and in their language, Mapudungún. The population of this group in Chile is estimated at 1.8 million people.
Recently, Piñera’s government sent military personnel to the southern region of the country due to a series of invasions and attacks carried out by Mapuche groups on farms and businesses.
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