Image: Shutterstock/roibu Image: Shutterstock/roibu POLLS OPEN IN Chile today with voters facing a choice between far-right and leftist candidates for their president.
For a country that has voted centrist since the democratic ousting of brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet 31 years ago, there is a stark choice between two political outsiders — one promising a “social welfare” state, the other a continuation of Chile’s neoliberal economic model. Socially-liberal Boric, who has taken up the mantle of Chile’s 2019 anti-inequality uprising, has vowed to increase social spending in a country with one of the world’s largest gaps between rich and poor.“I am very nervous, with stomach pain,” Boric voter Carol Bravo, a 34-year-old barista, told AFP ahead of the vote, perplexed by Kast’s success but nevertheless hopeful that her candidate will prevail.
Both candidates have softened their policy proposals in a bid to appeal to Chileans who were left without an obvious candidate when they split the centrist vote in the first round, leaving only the two antipodes.