Natalia A. Ramos Miranda and Anthony Esposito

SANTIAGO (Reuters] -The leftist Chilean candidate Gabriel Boric has 53.4% of vote. Jose Antonio Kast, a far-right contender, is on 46.6%. The early results were revealed on Sunday with just shy 4% of votes tallied.

Chileans were able to go to the polls this Sunday, to vote in their most divisive presidential elections in many decades. There are two options for future visions: one that is about pensions and the other is privatization.

Voters are choosing between Gabriel Boric https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/student-leader-president-chiles-boric-eyes-historic-election-win-2021-12-15, a 35-year-old former student protest leader allied to the Communist Party, and ultra-conservative Jose Antonio Kast https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chiles-bolsonaro-hard-right-kast-rises-with-frank-talk-crime-focus-2021-11-16, 55, a law-and-order candidate and defender of former dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Lucrecia Cornejo (72) a 72-year-old seamstress, stated that she wanted real change while waiting in line for Boric to be elected. Boric promised to address inequalities in education and pensions.

“I demand equality. We should not be called the “broken ones”, but we need fairness in education, healthcare, and wages.

Kast, who is often compared to Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and has become an icon for Chile’s “unapologetic rights”, stated in an open letter that Saturday “two models for Chile are coming face-to-face”. Kast offered to “change with order” and stability.

The candidates are from the outside of the centerist political consensus that has ruled Chile since 1990, when democracy was restored to Chile after the military dictatorship of Pinochet.

The final opinion polls https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/final-chile-presidential-polls-show-leftist-boric-edging-ahead-2021-12-18 ahead of the run-off election showed Boric widening his lead against Kast in a still close race. The polling stations were closed at 6 PM (2100 GMT).

Each candidate received below 30% in a split first round vote in November. They have been working hard ever since to win the support of moderate voters in Chile. Chile is the biggest producer in the world and has around 19 million inhabitants.

Javier Morales (29), a construction worker, said, “It’s not that I am 100% for Boric. But now it is time decide between two options and Boric will be my choice.”

Florencia Vergara (25-year-old dentistry student) was backing Kast to be the “lesser of two evils” in the economy. She said that she liked Kast’s proposals regarding economic issues even though he doesn’t share all of his political ideas. Chile still needs some order.

GHOST OF THE PINOCHET

Boric’s supporters claim he will reform the market-oriented economy of their country that goes back to Pinochet. While it was credited with driving growth in the economy, critics have accused it of creating deep divisions between the rich and the poor.

Kast, meanwhile, has defended Pinochet’s legacy and aimed barbs at Boric for his alliance with the Communist Party in his leftist coalition, which has resonated with supporters https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/the-coup-destroyed-us-memories-pinochet-resonate-chiles-crossroads-election-2021-12-17. Some Kast voters said that Chile wouldn’t be Marxist on Sunday.

“I support José Antonio Kast because he is a just man,” Marisol Araneda, 49, a merchant selling fruits and vegetables, said on Sunday as she headed to vote, adding she feared Boric would take the country in the direction of socialist Venezuela.

Boric was a prominent student activist who led a protest to improve education in 2011. He openly wrote that his government would provide the improvements Chileans have demanded through widespread social movements in 2019.

He said, “This means having a genuine social security system, that doesn’t leave anybody behind, ending the hateful disparity between healthcare and healthcare, and moving forward without hesitation in the freedoms and rights of women.”

Protests that lasted for several months, and sometimes turned violent, led to a formal process of redrafting Chile’s centuries-old constitution. This text will be up for a referendum next year.

Jorge Valdivia is a 54-year-old businessman and a supporter of Boric. He said that voting was an opportunity for the country’s past to be closed.

“We have the ability to close down the harmful, abusive and dark model that only benefited a very small number,” he stated.