Democrats in Chile right to be worried in presidential runoff

The Chilean electorate is clearly in a volatile mood, but fewer than half of them bothered to vote in the first round of the presidential election last month. They were waiting for the second round, when they have to choose between only two candidates, not seven.

The great surprise in the first round of the Chilean presidential election last month was that an extreme-right politician called José Antonio Kast, pictured in 2017, got the most votes. Kast could actually do some harm if he became president—but it’s less likely than it looks, writes Gwynne Dyer. Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

December 16, 2021

LONDON, U.K.—British journalist Claud Cockburn once claimed that he won a contest among the sub-editors on The London Times to write the dullest headline and actually get it published in the paper. His winning headline was "Small earthquake in Chile. ...

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