Jeannette Jara of the Communist Party has won the first round of the Chilean presidential election. However, because together the four right-wing candidates secured more than two-thirds of the votes, observers say her right-wing populist opponent José Antonio Kast has a good chance of winning the run-off vote. The son of a German Wehrmacht officer, Kast has close ties to the Spanish right-wing populist party Vox.
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Cycles end but democracy must continue
El País hopes for democratic stability in Chile:
“Since the social uprising of 2019, the country has been oscillating between two extremes. … What we see now is an electorate that wants order and certainties. … Kast promises ‘common sense’ in response to what he describes as an excessive loss of identity and unworkable social policies [under the Boric government]. … However his project entails setbacks for hard-won rights, a return to authoritarianism and anti-political discourse. … Chile has sent a clear message: elections are won and lost, cycles come to an end. … What must not end is the conviction that democracy works.”
Latin America’s left has failed
The leftist wave on the subcontinent is clearly losing momentum, the Süddeutsche Zeitung observes:
“The reasons for this are manifold. Hardly any of its protagonists have succeeded in actually solving the structural problems in their own countries – inflation in Argentina, poverty in Ecuador. Others, such as Morales in Bolivia or Chávez’s successor Nicolás Maduro, under whom Venezuela has degenerated into a dictatorship, have also failed due to their arrogance. And hardly any of them have come up with an answer to one of the greatest challenges of our time: the drug cartels that are increasingly permeating Latin American society.”
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