Elections in Chile: "We risk the next 50 years"

• Chile Lucía Hiriart, widow of the dictator Augusto Pinochet, dies on the closing day of the electoral campaign in Chile

• Chile US congressmen and former president Bachelet ask to stop the right-wing José Antonio Kast

The man approaches the envoy of THE WORLD with a worried gesture.

Point out the new patch of grass and the newly planted flowers.

- Are you in charge?

Because they sent me to water.

Watering flowers this Friday in Santiago became the perfect metaphor for how the country reaches the crucial presidential elections on Sunday: tense, divided and distrustful, because, whatever happens, the defeated half of the population will feel on Sunday night that the worst of the past returns. Either communism returns or Pinochetism returns, says the thick, very thick line.

The flowers and grass were installed at dawn this Friday in the emblematic Plaza Baquedano by the followers of José Antonio Kast. That square, also known as Plaza Italia or, on the left, as Plaza de la Dignidad, was the epicenter of the social outbreak that began in October 2019, and which ended up changing Chilean politics at its roots. Today a Constituent Convention chaired by a Mapuche leader is in session and the left and the moderate right were left out of the second round. Chile is no longer a country for lukewarm people.

The intervention of Kast's followers to Plaza Baquedano, which shows a very bad face after two years of permanent demonstrations, was a simple message to society:

If they vote for Gabriel Boric and the hard left aligned with him, the country will be as messy and dirty as this square.

"We are not playing much,

are risking

Mauricio Droguett, a 37-year-old lawyer who went to the plaza to take photos, told EL MUNDO.

You don't even have to ask him for his vote on Sunday.

"The future is one of prosperity or political and social stagnation to end up like Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and North Korea."

José Hernández is watering behind him.

It was sent by the Providencia city hall, one of the communes in the Santiago metropolitan area, governed by Evelyn Matthei, from the right-wing Independent Democratic Union (UDI), the party traditionally linked to the dictator Augusto Pinochet, who died in 2006. Hernández would never have received that commission from Irací Hassler, the communist mayor of Santiago.

The square is right on the border between the two communes.

A while later, the police detain two people in the square.

Five hours later, an anti-Kast group removed the grass and flowers from the square.

Despite the bright Friday at the beginning of the austral summer, Santiago is pure tension.

"What is at stake this Sunday is to advance in the process of change with the Constituent Convention or to go to an involution, to a historical setback with José Antonio Kast

," Senator Juan Ignacio Latorre, Boric's link with the left, told this newspaper. and the European Social Democracy.

The only clear thing about Sunday is that it is not clear who will win.

Although polls are prohibited in Chile in the two weeks prior to the elections, foreign media are not reached by that veto.

Thus, two surveys circulated in the last hours.

One gives 50% to Boric and 50% to Kast.

The other, 48.5 to Kast and 48.4 to Boric.

Kast, who at the beginning of the campaign for the second round lost some of the energy and freshness that led him to win the first round, has apparently been closing the gap with Boric, who carries a stigma:

But Chile entered a new era two years ago, which even swallowed up the center-left and the center-right, the two coalitions that shared the presidency since 1990. It would not be a surprise then if yet another tradition was broken.

Kast arrived in the final hours before the election with an unexpected problem: the embodiment of the ghost of Pinochet.

When on Thursday, hours before the end of the campaign, it was learned that Lucía Hiriart had died at the age of 99, the image of the dictator returned.

The left celebrated, but Kast, clearly sympathetic to Pinochetism, especially its economic creed, had to come out and say that he had no ties of friendship with Pinochet's widow.

With the intention of harming as little as possible the man they wish to see in La Moneda from next March 11,

at their residence four hours south of Santiago.

Quite a contrast to the massive public funeral that he dedicated to the dictator 15 years ago.

Exhausted, the two candidates called each other quietly on Friday, and for the first time in months they made no public statements.

Boric, of Croatian origin, 35 years old, extensive tattoos on his arms, no children and leader of the student demonstrations of ten years ago.

Kast, of German origin, 55 years old, youthful defender of Pinochet and father of nine children.

One of the two will be president on Sunday, in a recount that is expected to be swift, despite hints of fraud from some Kast satellites.

And the Plaza Baquedano will once again be the protagonist, with or without flowers.

If there is euphoria there, the new president will be called Gabriel Boric.

If silence prevails, La Moneda will be by José Antonio Kast.

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