Andean Cold War
CHILE
Chileans will head to the polls this weekend to vote on who will become the country’s next president in a runoff that some political analysts consider a race between communism and fascism, Reuters reported.
The runoff will see leftist former student leader Gabriel Boric battling far-right conservative Jose Antonio Kast. It comes a month after Chile’s first round of elections saw Kast take a lead against Boric.
Even so, opinion polls have favored Boric but noted that the race will be close.
Boric has come under fire over his alliance with Chile’s Communist Party. He also inspires fear that his economic policies could affect the free-market rules that propelled the copper-rich country to decades of growth and made it a symbol of economic stability in Latin America.
Kast, meanwhile, has received criticism over his praise for, and his family’s connections to, the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Also, the Associated Press recently discovered documents that revealed that Kast’s German-born father, Michael, was a member of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party.
The Dec. 19 election comes about two years after Chile experienced months-long mass protests over inequality economic inequalities that eventually sparked an ongoing process to redraft the Pinochet-era constitution.
An assembly of mainly independent and leftist representatives is working on the constitutional redraft. Whoever wins the runoff will also have to handle a referendum on whether to approve the new charter during their first year in office.
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