Center-left will rule in Santiago de Chile and most regions

The Chilean center-left is the big winner in the regional elections in Chile which were held this Sunday, in which he won most of the governorships, including that of Santiago de Chile, with 99.3% of the votes counted.

The Constituent Unity Pact (left and center) gained power over the capital, in which candidate Claudio Orrego won 52.6% of the votes, and won 10 of the country’s 16 regions, eight of which won in the ballot and two in the first round.

It is the first time in history that Chile elects its intermediary authorities, before they are appointed by hand by the government, which is why they are considered to be crucial elections for the decentralization of the country.

“We took on this victory with great humility and with an immense sense of responsibility. Recovering the metropolitan area after the pandemic is going to be a very difficult task, ”said Orrego, who beat Karina Oliva of the Front Large (FA), a more radical left, in the capital.

The ruling right was the big loser: its bet on Santiago was largely ruled out in the first round and it only managed to win in the Araucania region in a ballot., in the center of the country, known to be a zone of conflict between the authorities and the indigenous peoples.

Only 2.5 of the 13 million people summoned went to the polls to elect the governors of 13 of the 16 regions of the country and the results were read with the naked eye in the presidential elections on November 21.

Orrego, who will rule for more than a third of the country’s population, could shift the axis of the opposition to the more traditional left and promote a more moderate candidate, while Oliva would have raised the most radical candidacies that by Daniel Jadue, of the Communist Party. Party.

The elected, who will take office on July 14 for a period of four years, they could become authorities with high visibility and, in many cases, territorial counter-powers in centralized Santiago, although their attributions are very limited to areas such as territorial order or the promotion of social development, always in focus. depending on the national budget, which leaves little room for action.

Turnout in these elections, which took place at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and with the entire capital confined, was the lowest since the return to democracy in 1990, at 19.6%, well below the minimum recorded in municipal elections. of 2016, when only 34.9% of voters voted.

As voting was no longer compulsory in 2012, no election exceeded 50% participation, with the exception of the plebiscite last October where he voted 50.9%.

Three of the 16 regions of the country did not organize a second round, the winners having been elected in May with more than 40% of the votes: the independent of the FA list Rodrigo Mundaca, in Valaparaíso (center); the socialist Andrea Macías Palma, in Aysén (south); and the independent leftist of the Constituent Unit block Jorge Flies, in Magallanes (south).

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