This Sunday there are primary elections in Chile | Left and right alliances define the candidates



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From Santiago

This Friday, a religious holiday in Chile, the armed forces and carabinieri were already deployed in the 1,450 polling stations – mainly schools and gymnasiums – where the presidential primary elections will be held this Sunday. An event that coincides with the relaxation of pandemic restrictions marked by the passage of all municipalities in Santiago to phase 3 of the “Step by step” plan with which the government of Sebastián Piñera has been trying to control it since last year. This meant that candidates’ campaign fences on Thursday were marked with masks and social distancing, still with the postcard of members waving flags, and concern over the number of people who will turn out to vote.

The main candidates are: to the left pact “I approve the dignity”, Daniel Jadue of the Communist Party and Gabriel Boric of the Social Convergence-Large Front: to the right of “Chili Vamos”, Joaquín Lavín of the Independent Democratic Union, Ignacio Briones d’Evopoli, Mario Desbordes de Renovación Nacional and the independent Sebastián Sichel. It remains to define the candidates of the center-left and the independents, such as the extreme right José Antonio Kast. But this Sunday’s primaries could be those of Chile’s next president under the new constitution that began to be written last week.

JADUE, THE FAVORITE

Without a doubt, the most striking candidacy is that of Jadue, sociologist, architect and mayor of the municipality of Santiago de Recoleta. He’s been the favorite in every presidential poll since last year, with the June Criteria Poll giving him eighteen points to Lavín’s thirteen. Its territorial management, expressed by the creation of opticians, bookstores and even popular real estate with prices well below the market, has attracted attention. His character too, which has led him to face on the same issues on television or radio as the extreme concentration of media in Chile, where the majority belong to the right-wing business community. Something which, added to his CP activism, generated resistance. His rival Boric took advantage of this with a much slower speech, emphasizing the environment and seeking to attract the center-left voter.

And although they have kept in the televised debates a certain cordial tone because they know they will have to ally themselves to face the right, this week Boric has had friction with Jadue. The mayor rejected interviews due to notable hostility from Chilean journalists and accused him of inexplicably approving projects such as the “anti-barricade law”, which facilitates the imprisonment of those who participated in the attacks. protests during the social epidemic. Jadue had the backing of international stars such as Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, who said “he’s a really good man and we need him”, and Jorge González, former frontman of Los Prisioneros, a band of Chilean rock with a comparable level. popular devotion to the Redonditos de Ricota but also with a continental resonance like Soda Stereo. González said that “if a right-wing government is re-elected we will continue as we are, nobody wants to. We need a change of course. The difference is that Jadue presents a specific project. You have to turn left anyway. “

The PC candidate preferred to communicate on social networks and with a speech that seeks to ensure the vote on the left. This Sunday evening, we began to transform Chile from Approving Dignity, and this is done from the territories, municipalities, rural areas, backward areas, sacrificial areas that are going to be the ones that are going to come together. lift up against it. model. To start making the transformations from where they should be made, from the invisible sectors that have had no voice in those 30 years”.

“We made what others said was impossible come true. We have traveled almost all over Chile as a team and have had a wonderful and wonderful welcome. We are going to have a resounding success and an extremely powerful result to start the path of the first round, where we hope to win, in the first round, the Presidency of the Republic ”.

Boric avoids referring to Jadue and in his closing campaign in Valparaíso assured that he hopes to be a president who, if his term ends, “has less power than when he started.” In addition to noting that “if Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave and that every day of our mandate we will remember why we came here”. in his conglomerate, which emerged after the student demonstrations of 2021: “For a long time the state has been the administrator of inequalities, today we want to say that the state can change its political and class character (…) only it is an interim state, but it is also capable of giving power, of trusting its people. ”

LAVÍN, A TRANSFORMER OF LAW

For Joaquín Lavín, unquestionably the favorite of the right, this is the third adventure as a presidential candidate and he knows he has more possibilities than ever. Taking advantage of the cordiality of the press, the former mayor of the municipality of Las Condes had no difficulty in expressing his rejection of same-sex marriage nor in justifying his passage through Pinochetism, of which he was minister and one of the his strongest supporters when he was arrested in London in 1999. But now he says it has turned into a form of government he calls “social democracy”.

His closing speech at Casona Santa Rosa de Las Condes, a municipality of which he was mayor between 2016 and June 2021, played a role in the attack on Jadue. “The possibility of making profound changes and that our country once again become a land of opportunities for Chilean families is what is at stake. And for this we must follow a united path. In peace, by speaking, by recognizing the good of the other, with agreements, without disqualifications, with agreements, without violence. This is what I want for Chile and what I have gathered in recent weeks ”.

And he added: “Either we will vote on Sunday or we won’t complain later. Losing an election with Lagos or Bachelet is not the same as ceding Chile to Daniel Jadue. He said he would legalize not only marijuana, but also cocaine and the base paste. That he would forgive the murderer of Jaime Guzmán. That this would let SMEs die. That if someone takes a property, they won’t kick it out. That he will authorize free abortion and demilitarize La Araucanía. We don’t want this Chile ”.

FRAGMENTED PIÑERISM

The rest of the candidates, who represent fragments of the right that ruled with Piñera and who will have to negotiate spaces and quotas in the event of Lavín’s eventual triumph, were a little more subtle. Former defense minister, lawyer and former police officer Mario Desbordes underlined that “we are building social rights with a heart, with a street, a right which knows people, which understands people, which lives day by day with all Chileans., and that is why we are able to walk in the streets and offer solutions to everyday problems ”.

Briones, Piñera’s former finance minister and representative of the more “progressive” side of the right, said in the Maule region that these elections are fundamental because they will mark a new cycle where “the next four years are not at stake, but the next thirty ”. And he stressed: “There are two projects here, one that believes in freedom and wants to support entrepreneurs, revive the economy and carry out deep reforms. And the other who seeks to limit freedoms, seeks to expand the state with magical promises and refounding dreams that are not possible and wants to deceive people. We want to work together and build bridges with other sectors. The coming cycle requires dialogue and hard work ”.

Sichel, a former Minister of Social Development, who presents himself as someone who rose from below – to the point of having launched a book called “Sin Privilegios” – and who still gets angry when he asks how he was able to go from supporting Bachelet of DC He was an ally of Piñera, he said at the close of the campaign in La Reina: “We will defend the country and what has been done, but we will not be satisfied not. We will make changes, but we will not let violence win. We are the ones who want and believe in change, but good and positive change that includes everyone ”.

And he wondered theatrically: Who are you? “To which he replied:” We are the millions who in thirty years yet will speak of Chile with pride. We will say that we are building a just and good homeland. That we conquer violence. That we didn’t mind standing up for what we believed in, and that we did it with pride by leveling the playing field, but without hatred, without violence, in collaboration.

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