Free-market champion José Antonio Kast bests Gabriel Boric in first round of Chilean presidential elections

After none of the seven candidates secured the necessary 50 percent of the vote in Chile’s presidential election yesterday, the country will head into a runoff on Dec. 19.

Chileans will now have to decide between the free-market oriented lawyer and politician José Antonio Kast and the left-wing former student leader Gabriel Boric.

Chile presently finds itself in a precarious – and extremely polarized – political situation, marked by two years of often violent demonstrations in which people took to the streets to protest income inequality and many of the social and economic legacies of Pinochet’s military government.

Also on the table is the future of Chile’s prolific private pension fund administrators (AFPs) and the constitution, which is currently being re-written by a constitutional convention.

“Today those who wanted the state to control everything and take away our liberty have lost,” Kast told a crowd after securing first place in yesterday’s election. “We will work to recover order, employment and progress. We will free ourselves from corruption, narcotraffic and terrorism.”

Ultimately, Kast described the election as a choice between “liberty and communism,” indirectly referencing Boric’s alliance with the Communist Party.

Boric, on the other hand, told voters that he was fighting for “democracy, for inclusion” and “for justice.”

The 35-year-old lawmaker who led student protests in 2011 – demanding systematic reforms to Chile's education system – has openly pledged that he will work to dismantle Chile’s free-market model – instead focusing on strengthening environmental protections and indigenous rights.

Chile’s economic model, designed by University of Chicago trained economists, was once lauded for its rapid growth rate and the speedy eradication of poverty.

Colloquially, it led Chile to be referred to as an “economic miracle," although those days feel to many like a fever dream. 

Addressing supporters after advancing into the second round, Boric said, "We have been entrusted to lead a dispute for democracy, for inclusion, for justice, for the respect and dignity of all."

At the end of the night, Kast was in the lead with 27.94 percent of the vote, trailed by Boric who attained 25.75 percent.

Both candidates will likely spend the next month courting voters and making a case for the direction in which Chile should go.

"Let no one get it wrong, the only presidential candidacy that will restore peace, the only presidential candidacy that is an alternative to face criminals and drug traffickers and the only option that will put an end to terrorism, is the one we represent, there is no other," Mr. Kast said.