Election Night in Chile

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio speaks to Darryl Morris for Times Radio, previewing and then analyzing results from the first round of Chile's presidential election. 

Transcript

Darryl Morris: 0:00

In Chile, there is an election that's really worth our time. One of the most divisive campaigns in recent times. Two of the front runners, a communist and a right wing populist, makes for a fascinating contest. Jon Bonfiglio is our man in Latin America watching closely for us tonight. Jon, hello, good evening. Hey Darryl, how are you? Very well, sir. Introduce us to some of the characters in this story.

Jon Bonfiglio: 0:19

Yeah, I mean, look, it is fascinating. This continues the by now established trend of international polls in which the electorate almost entirely distrusts established political norms and structures. For sure, Latin America has historically been a volatile region, but Chile is not a part of that really, definitely not a part of that model, and is one of the most uh stable countries in the region. Today, however, as you say, the top three candidates in the polls are a communist and an array of far right candidates. Um, this is the first round of the election after which, unless someone gets over 50% of the vote, which just isn't going to happen, the top two candidates will go into a runoff in mid-December. Um, it appears that the far right, in total, across the candidates, has an overall majority, but a new compulsory voting law is expected to bring unpredictability to the process.

Darryl Morris: 1:10

Okay, we'll come back to that in a minute because that's interesting. Um, in terms of in terms of what sort of dominated the debate, how's it gone?

Jon Bonfiglio: 1:19

I think it's important to remember that in 2019 Chile had widespread national demonstrations and riots, which all began, cost of living crisis. Where have we heard that before? It began with a student jumping a metro barrier and everything escalated from there. On the back of that, four years ago, leftist reform candidate Gabriel Boric won on a platform of progressive policies and a sort of structural and constitutional reform of Chile, which stalled, leaving a government in paralysis. So, from all sides, it left a sense again of failure in the possibility of the usual suspects, added to which a growth in the power of transnational criminal organizations, which has been entirely regional now. It's not Chile specific, but it has particularly impacted Chile, which has always been a sort of a quiet, safe uh, I want to say backwater. That's led to um 63% of respondents saying violent crime was now among their largest um priorities, and the fallout, again, regional, of the vast human migration from the Venezuelan economic disaster under Nicolas Maduro has not spared Chile. Um, nearly a million people have moved Venezuelans have moved into uh Chile in the last few years. Um, so immigration is now a major issue for voters too. Essentially, people are just interested in results, whatever the cost. They're not interested in the process, they're just interested in getting things done, and whether that means a candidate of the extreme left or one of the multitude from the extreme right, that's what they're going for.

Darryl Morris: 2:45

Um Argentina is next door, of course, and we've seen uh Javier Miley there, a fascinating story. Is is it a sort of politics that travels?

Jon Bonfiglio: 2:54

It is. The two big figures on the right, regionally, are Javier Miley, the anarcho-libertarian. His model is particularly an economic model, and then you've got Nayibali and El Salvador, that is a sort of a um an anti-crime uh candidate, but undoubtedly both of those are um are flagships for ways, slightly different flagships, ways to do things, but undoubtedly have adopted um support. Uh José Antonio Cast, the main far-right candidate, who's lost two elections so far, he's running for the third time. His brother, interestingly, was a former minister during the military dictatorship of uh General Augusto Pinochet. He's tempered some of his policies recently, but he still inhabits the landscape of the far right. A lot of his rhetoric echoes the Naibukeli uh line of uh of policy making. And then even further to the right, you've got this uh Johann Kaiser, this former YouTube pundit, uh, who's anti-vax, anti-abortion, a proponent of an almost entirely absent state, basically in the style of Javier Millet. He also advocates execution for a variety of crimes. And then on the left, you've got Janet Hada, who is about, despite her being a Communist Party candidate, she's about as close to the centre as you can get in terms of the major front runners, as she's a minister in the in the the current government, and is a fairly standard advocate for leftist state interventions across pension subsidies and the welfare state. But it is it's a stark choice, and it's something which Chile, in living memory, certainly since the uh the dictatorship of the 80s and before, uh since Pinochet, it just hasn't seen.

Darryl Morris: 4:25

Um okay. Um you you mentioned that there is a new compulsory voting uh uh law that's gonna bring a huge amount of people who haven't voted before uh into the into the process. I mean that that is a you know potential sort of wild card.

Jon Bonfiglio: 4:38

It is, but it's also, as we know from a number of other international elections, it's it's often these individuals are low probability voters that people don't really take into account for, that don't come into the polls, so it's difficult to know which way they're going to swing. And of course, in the kind of standard horseshoe politics, the shape of horseshoe politics, um, they're at almost as likely to vote uh i in terms of you know if there's support for extremist candidates. Of course, if they're centrist, they're centrist. But in support for extremist candidates, uh you know, somebody could vote for the extreme left almost as easily as they could vote for the extreme right.

Darryl Morris: 5:12

Okay. So we've got a few results. Uh, we're going to come back to you a little bit later on, John, aren't we, to get a slightly clearer picture. We're not going to get a winner tonight. It's the first round. Um, no chance of anybody getting over 50%. Just just give us just remind us of of of where we are in terms of some of those uh early uh indicators.

Jon Bonfiglio: 5:26

Yeah, so uh Janet Haddad, the Communist Party candidate, she she's not competing against her side of the spectrum, particularly, so she's um she's likely to come in as uh fairly uh uh high amongst in in the polls, and then the the right wing vote is going to be split. So I guess the question is which of the right wing candidates is going to emerge and go through to the second round, and we should have uh preliminary results in the in the course of the next uh hour or so. The big question, I guess, of course it's a big question for for Chile, but it's also a big regional question because it Chile is the first big uh democracy in Latin America to go to the polls in the next 12 months, uh to be followed by Brazil and Colombia, as well as then multiple other smaller countries. Um, there've always been uh pockets of sort of regional political instability in Latin America, but I struggle to remember, and this is an example of where we're going over the course of the next few months and the next year, I struggle to remember a time in Latin America in which there has been uh there's been such a political cliff edge, and in particular here, the big specter, the ghost of the feast, the spectre of the feast, is Donald Trump. Which way is Latin America in the face of a sort of an expansionist hemispheric uh model that Trump is is um is expounding? Which way is Latin America gonna go? Is it gonna go with the tide or is it gonna resist uh what's coming out of the USA?

Darryl Morris: 6:51

Okay, uh, John, thank you, my friend. Uh always good to chat. We'll do it again in about an hour or so. We'll catch up on uh some of those results as they uh they come in from Chile that are really interesting, really worth our time for all the reasons that John outlines there. Daryl Morris on Times Radio. Hello there, good morning. Sam Walker is with us from Arizona, a little bit further south uh in Latin America, in Chile. There is an election tonight that is worth our time. John Bob Finglio has had his eye on it for us. John, we were considering the uh the communists versus the sort of far-right parties uh in this presidential election, round one. Uh, not going to get a result tonight, but we're gonna get a sense of who's in the second round, and we have some results.

Jon Bonfiglio: 7:28

Yeah, we do. Leftist uh slash communist party candidate Janet Hada uh and José Antonio Castro, the extreme right, will contest the final round of the election in a in a month's time, despite an unfinished count. All other right-wing candidates have interestingly really immediately conceded and already declared their support for José Antonio Cast, again, the far right uh candidate, current president Gabriel Boric, has congratulated Hada and Cast and said that he trusts in dialogue, love for Chile ahead of uh any differences. Hada has said uh that Chile is a big country. Now she's referring to two things here. On the one hand, she's saying, I am the big tent politician. Anybody who's disaffected out there, come to me. But she's also referring, as we said on the previous slot, to the almost one million Venezuelans who are currently in Chile and who, after a five-year residency term, are able to vote in the election. So she's kind of courting them too. But it signifies an absolute destruction of the standard right and the standard left. And perhaps the greatest surprise of the night is uh the result for Franco Parisi, uh a populist, third place, 19%. So arguably a kingmaker for the next part of the election. But he says he is neither of the left or of the right. That's been a big surprise. And then the other thing which I think is worth note of note internationally is that um results in Latin America genuinely, unless something's gone wrong, uh, are really quick. They're automated, they're professional, they're uh they're very 21st century. Results uh in Chile have been a little slower than usual coming in. That's not because the systems failed, it's because there is a sense that there is a need for increased scrutiny at the ballot box and across results, given increasing global distrust across electoral processes.

Darryl Morris: 9:15

Okay, that's interesting. Uh John, more familiar with us on these results from Chile's election. And John, we were just talking about you know the second round now, the two candidates uh uh remaining where the support sort of coalesces.

Jon Bonfiglio: 9:28

So if you just add up really basically the numbers, the far right is going to win by a significant majority. But again, as we said in the in the in the first bit, it's really difficult to add up these numbers, and and um it's definitely not a standard um you know, which we know about again internationally. It's not politics as it was 20 years ago, 30 years ago. 30 years ago, it's completely different. The I think the central point here, of course, for Chile, but also more broadly for the region, is that the shape of Latin American politics has probably has never been, has never had this level of global significance in terms of how the eye of the world and the eye of the USA is on Latin America at the moment. So there's this sort of sense that potentially, whichever way that the election goes, could indicate a domino effect for Latin America um over the course of the next few months.

Darryl Morris: 10:20

Okay. Uh John Bob Figlio with us in uh uh on that story in uh Chile as the elections uh wrap up there. We'll come back to that as it happens towards uh December. Is it December the fourth, John? Is that right? December December the fourteenth, exactly a month from now. Okay. Excellent. We'll look forward to it. Uh John, thank you so much. John Bob Figlio with us uh on Times Radio tonight's.