Chile’s pro-government candidate denounces “blackmail” to turn more conservative

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The candidate of the Chilean governing right-wing party, Sebastián Sichel, denounced this Tuesday “blackmail” by his coalition to turn to the right, given the recent rise in the polls of the conservative presidential candidate, José Antonio Kast.

“While some of us want to offer the country a project for the future, others want to return to the past (…) I will not accept the blackmail of those who want me to become something I am not, an intolerant person, an extreme right-winger,” said Sichel, a minister in the cabinet of the center-right President Sebastián Piñera.

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In a prime time press conference, the candidate asked the parties that make up the coalition Chile Podemos Más “freedom of action to make the decision they want regarding their party support.”

Sichel, who is not affiliated to any party and was surprisingly elected in the primary in July, started as one of the favorites in the presidential race but has been losing strength in recent weeks, to the point that there are polls that place him in third and even fourth position, behind Kast.

“We have realized that some, getting out of the democratic commitment we had agreed, want to support an old right-wing because they do not believe in a collective project”, indicated Sichel, accompanied by his closest team.

“We will not build ditches where Chileans want to build agreements,” he added in reference to one of the controversial proposals of Kast, leader of the Republican Party and who has promised a ditch on the country’s northern border to curb growing illegal migration.

Several parliamentarians from the ultra-conservative Independent Democratic Union (UDI) – the coalition’s leading party together with National Renewal (RN) – such as Claudio Alvarado and Cristián Labbé announced their support for Kast for the November 21 elections, the most uncertain and influential in recent times.

Sichel and Kast will compete against five other candidates, although the big battle to go to the second round on December 19 will likely be between two of them, the leftist Gabriel Boric and the Christian Democrat Yasna Provoste.

The person who reaches La Moneda (seat of Government) will have to put back on track a country that experienced serious protests in 2019 and implement the rules of the new Constitution, which began to be drafted last July and must be endorsed in a plebiscite, foreseeably in 2022.