Why Chile’s Presidential Vote Comes at a Crazy Time

Chileans go to the polls on Dec. 19 to choose between presidential candidates from the hard right and the far left. This will be the first election since the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in which the candidates don’t come from the two coalitions that dominated politics in the past three decades; their contenders flopped to fourth and fifth places in first-round voting on Nov. 21. The election comes at a time when the current president (who is barred from seeking a second consecutive term by Chile’s term limits) recently survived impeachment, the fate of the country’s iconic pension system may be at stake and the country’s constitution is in the process of being rewritten. The Chilean peso gained 2.2% on the Monday after the first-round vote before flopping to a new 18-month low.

The contenders are Gabriel Boric, a 35-year-old leftist former student leader, and Jose Antonio Kast, a 55-year-old conservative former lawmaker. Boric, who is allied with Chile’s Communist Party, wants to do away with the nation’s market-based neoliberal model. He proposes to raise the minimum wage, as well as corporate and wealth taxes, to cut the maximum work week to 40 hours from 45, introduce workers’ participation in companies’ boards, and to create a new national development bank. Kast’s plan is broadly based on increasing investment incentives. He pledges cutting corporate and wealth taxes and reducing public spending. On social issues, Boric aims to make abortion free and widely available and supports a program of LGBTQ rights to end discrimination. Kast opposes same-sex marriages and abortion, and promises to crack down on illegal immigration.