Former student leader Gabriel Boric defeated Communist candidate in left-wing primaries in Chile

The deputy and former student leader Gabriel Boric and the former independent minister Sebastián Sichel became this Sunday the presidential letters respectively of the left and the right, facing the elections of November 21.

The member of the Front large (FA) Gabriel Boric was elected this Sunday with 60.2% of the votes as a candidate of the left coalition “I approve the dignity” in the elections of November 21 whose successor will be chosen from the president of the Chilee, the curator Sebastián Piñera.

With 56.7% of the votes counted, the 35-year-old former student leader against all odds, he won against the Communist mayor of the Recoleta district of the capital, Daniel Jadue.

With a proposal to change the current neoliberal model more transversal than the communist model and a more conciliatory toneBoric has been an MP since 2014 and burst onto the political scene during major student protests a decade ago in favor of free.

Boric is from the city of Punta Arenas and among the main points of its program, proposed to re-found the Carabineros de Chile as civilian police in favor of human rights, in addition to promising an economic and health recovery through a national health care system, a mental health plan and job transformation so you can ensure greater democratic participation and worker parity in business directories.

He also put on the table the possibility of a tax on the “super rich” of the country.

The intern of the ruling party

In addition, Former independent minister Daniel Sichel was elected this Sunday with 48.6% of the vote as a candidate for the ruling right-wing coalition “Chili Vamos” ahead of the November 21 elections, in which the successor to the Chilean president, the conservative Sebastián Piñera, will be chosen. With nearly 50% of the votes counted, the Minister of Social Development with Piñera between 2018-2019 and president of the public company Banco Estado until December 2020 He won over the big favorite: former mayor Joaquín Lavin, of the ultra-conservative Independent Democratic Union (UDI).

Passed by various parties on the political spectrum, including the Christian Democrats (DC), Sichel he defines himself as the only “center” candidate and has attended these primaries without the support of any specific training.

Among its main proposals, it emerges that, in the first 100 days of his eventual government, the bureaucracy would decrease, in addition to freeing the business and improving the protection network.

Regarding pensions, Sichel proposed a strengthened individual retirement savings system, where there will be the possibility of choosing the type of administrator that the contributor wishes, in addition to creating a solidarity fund whose vocation will be to collect annual contributions from the State to ensure its balance.

Sichel (43) and Boric (35) are the two youngest candidates in the primaries, which attracted more voters than expected, despite the pandemic, the holiday Friday and electoral fatigue, since it is the fifth elections this year after the constituent, municipal and first and second rounds of regional.

The center-left could not agree to register a joint candidacy, while everything indicates that the president of the Senate, the Christian Democrat Yasna Provoste, will be launched before the August 23 deadline. The great unknown is whether he will receive the support of the Socialist Party (PS), which opts a priori for Paula Narváez, who was spokesperson for Michelle Bachelet’s second term (2014-2018).

The primaries took place as Chile emerged from a virulent second wave and two weeks after the installation of the Constitutional Convention, composed of 155 elected citizens and responsible for drafting a new constitution to replace the current one, drawn up under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

The constituent process was precisely the way out that politics found in the wave of protests that erupted in October 2019 against inequality and the government, the most serious since the end of the military regime, with some 30 dead and thousands injured. .

KEEP READING: