Chilean Caught In the War Of Polarisation

Polarization has swept Chile in strange ways, leaving it only two strangely different candidates to be selected towards the first-round of presidential election. Chile has seen a lot of change- from complete conservatism to now same sex marriage coming through.

Speaking to a journalist who wrote a column over Chile’s crumbling political powers, Michael Shifter, president of Inter-American Dialogue, said, “In Chile, I think you see what is now the established trend in Latin America — the complete crumbling of political parties with any kind of moderate centrist option. It’s being replaced by high levels of political uncertainty and enormous fragmentation.”

Between the older José Antonio Kast and the bearded millennial leader Gabriel Boric, the former seems to be winning more brownie points. Kast speaks for an anti-migrant sentiment, and has impressed the police. The culture wars propelling Kast to the presidency in Chile are similar to the themes that took Trump to the White House.

 

Chileans have again and again blamed the migrant population for rise in poverty. Kast seems to do well with an anti-migrant sentiment when he said he wanted to dig trenches on the sides of the border to dissuade migrants from jumping into Chilean territory.

Like much of polarized Latin America, Chileans are also losing faith in traditional parties. Center-right President Sebastián Piñera survived an impeachment attempt over alleged irregularities in the sale of a mining firm, but the accusations fed into the cross-continental narrative of a privileged political elite.

 

The gravitation of youth in Chile to the more distant left explains the rise of Boric. The presidential hopeful embodies the student movement that has criticized the mainstream left for its unwillingness to touch sacred cows like Chile’s landmark but troubled private pension system. Boric has said he will replace it with a public pension plan.