Chile’s sharply polarized presidential runoff is set to be decided on December 14. Voters will be choosing between Jeannette Jara of the Communist Party and José Antonio Kast of the ultra-conservative Republican Party.
Ken Roberts, a professor of government with a specialization in Latin American politics at Cornell University says since the end of the Pinochet regime, Chile has been seen as one of Latin America's strongest democracies.
Roberts says: “Chile's vibrant democracy faces a new challenge in a highly polarized second-round presidential election that appears likely to bring far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast, a staunch defender of the Pinochet regime, into presidential office.
“A Kast victory would reinforce the recent surge of right and far-right political actors in Latin America, who are strongly supported by the Trump Administration in the US. But it would also continue a much longer pattern of volatile anti-incumbent voting in Latin America's turbulent democratic waters. This latter pattern suggests that any political shift to the right in Chile and neighboring countries is likely to encounter strong political head winds and underlying fragilities in a regional context of acute polarization and severely atrophied political institutions.”
