Anti-abortion populist leads Chilean vote

A RIGHT-WING Chilean populist who opposes gay marriage and abortion and has vowed to build a ditch on the border with Bolivia has taken a lead in the country’s election.

Jose Antonio Kast won 28 per cent of the vote, while the Leftist Gabriel Boric came in second, with 26 per cent. They will now advance to a runoff on Dec 19.

Centrists, including Sebastian Sichel, the candidate from President Sebastian Pinera’s party, proved the least popular.

The election on Sunday continued a recent rout of traditional political parties in charge of decades of neoliberal policy credited with Chile’s relative wealth but blamed for social inequity.

The success of political opposites came two years after anti-inequality protests that set Chile on the path to constitutional change.

Kast, who has expressed admiration for General Pinochet, the dictator of Chile from the early 1970s, opposes abortion and campaigned on restoring order and security.

Mr Boric promised to install a “welfare state” if he won, and at 35 would become Chile’s youngest president in modern history.

He supports legalising abortion and same-sex marriage. If elected he said he would raise taxes on the “super rich” to expand social services and boost protections of the environment.

Marcelo Mella, a political scientist at the University of Santiago, said: “It is going to be a choice of one fear against the other. The fear of a Left-wing Boric candidacy not able to respond to the (economic) problems facing the country today or the fear of an ultra-conservative leadership with Kast.”