The deadline for presidential candidates to register was Aug. 23. By the end of that evening, nine had registered. Out of the nine, only two are independent.
This year’s presidential race has been relatively uneventful. The primaries that took place on July 18 surprised everyone when the two favorites, Daniel Jadue and Joaquín Lavín, came up empty-handed, but since then it has mostly been business as usual.
As of Aug. 23, the deadline for candidates to register, four had already registered, and by the end of the day five more joined the race. These are the nine on the ballot:
Gabriel Boric
Member of the Social Convergence party, Gabriel Boric was the candidate who won the most votes in the primaries, not only for the Apruebo Dignidad Coalition, but for the entire electoral register, with over a million votes, and 60 percent of the votes for his coalition, beating Communist candidate Daniel Jadue.
Boric is currently a Congressman representing District 28 in the Magallanes region.
Sebastián Sichel
Independent candidate, ex-president of Banco de Chile, and ex-Minister of Social Development and Family for President Sebastián Piñera’s second term, Sebastián Sichel beat the Chile Vamos (now Chile Podemos Más) favorite runner-up, Joaquín Lavín, with 49.1 percent of the votes and over 650,000 individual votes.
Yasna Provoste
During last weekend’s Citizen Poll, Yasna Provoste became the official candidate of the Unidad Constituyente coalition, even though the poll had a low turnout of just about 150,000 voters. Provoste won 60 percent of the votes.
Provoste previously served as the Senate’s president, but after winning the poll stepped down as Senate president.
José Antonio Kast
President of the Republican Party and an extreme-right, conservative figure, José Antonio Kast officially announced his candidacy on Aug. 22 in Temuco. This is his second presidential run. In 2017, he ran as an independent, after leaving the Independent Democratic Union party (UDI).
Marco Enríquez-Ominami
Member of the Progressive party, Marco Enríquez-Ominami (ME-O), announced his fourth presidential campaign. Initially, he wasn’t allowed to register, due to his implication in the OAS and SQM fraud cases. However, he appealed to the Constitutional Court, which ruled in his favor and reinstituted his political rights.
His campaign announcement was controversial, as the Progressive Party is part of the Unidad Constituyente coalition, which previously proclaimed Provoste as its candidate. ME-O went against the coalition’s decision and registered as a candidate anyway.
Eduardo Artés
Member of the Patriotic Union party, Eduardo Artés is also a recurring name when it comes to presidential candidates. He was a pre-candidate in the 2009 election, and he was his party’s official candidate in the 2017 election.
He is currently the secretary general of the Communist Party, and also president of the Patriotic Union party.
Also read:
Seven months to go: Meet the Presidential Candidates, Part 2
Franco Parisi
Franco Parisi is a member of the recently-created Party of the People (Partido de la Gente). He previously ran in 2013 with no political affiliation. Currently, Parisi isn’t even in Chile. He has been living in Alabama for over a year, but he was registered by his party to be a candidate.
Parisi hasn’t spoken to the press at all about his presidential campaign.
Gino Lorenzini
Gino Lorenzini is known for being the founder of Felices y Forrados, a company established on the premise of moving between the different AFP funds to develop more fruitful pensions, which shuttered in July due to a new transparency bill regarding company and market agent responsibilities.
He announced his plans to become a presidential candidate on Aug. 11, and, by Aug. 23, he had gathered 41,000 signatures, substantially more than the 34,000 needed.
He is the second independent candidate on the ballot.
Diego Ancalao
Although Diego Ancalao is an independent candidate, he is part of the Lista del Pueblo coalition, after the coalition’s former candidate, Cristián Cuevas, was withdrawn.
Ancalao is a Mapuche activist and has been part of other political parties before, such as the Christian Democracy party (DC) and Citizen Left (IC).
Others whose names had been floated but didn’t make it into the race were Cristián Contreras, popularly known as Dr. File and who is instead running for a Senate seat, and Congresswoman Pamela Jiles, who withdrew her name a few months ago.
The presidential election takes place later this year on Nov. 21, with a possible runoff a month later on Dec 19.
Javiera is from Santiago de Chile, she is studying journalism at Universidad de Chile, since 2017 and doing her internship at Chile Today.