Chile Elections 2021: Sebastián Sichel says he aspires to the Presidency to “build a liberal identity of the center”

Sebastian Sichel, the presidential candidate of the right-wing ruling coalition in Chile who defines himself as a center, independent and liberal, is convinced that in the elections the option of moderates like him will win, he said in an interview with AFP.

“The world changed and politicians have to assume it”, launches this 44-year-old lawyer, former Minister of the government of Sebastián Piñera, who surprised in May when he won the official primary.

Less than a month before the November 21 elections, he claims that the game is open between him and three of his six rivals: Gabriel Boric, from the left coalition; Yasna Provoste, a center Christian Democrat; and Jose Antonio Kast, far right.

“If I had to bet on a barbecue to see who is going to win, I wouldn’t know, including myself”, recognize.

Polls place him between third and fourth place, but he passes those numbers, since they gave him as a loser in May.

He believes that the extremes of left and right were stagnant in a 1990s logic. “They see two worlds, that binary posture, Cold War. They show that polarization simply and not the subtlety of the complexity of the citizen ”, claims.

“I am not continuity” –

“I am a liberal person, I am a person who feels represented by the political center in Chile”, indicates this ex-militant Christian Democrat.

“The political center has been orphaned for a long time because part of the traumas of the dictatorship was to be separated into two bridges, between Yes and No and a very binary politics that does not recognize the dimensionality or depth of Chilean politics”, it says in reference to the plebiscite of 1988 that began the end of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

“I am trying to build that liberal identity in Chile, a center liberal identity”, claims.

Say what “Interpreting the policy with the code of the last four years is crazy. I would not be the continuity of Piñera, or of (Michelle) Bachelet, or of (Patricio) Aylwin, or of Pinochet, or of (Salvador) Allende ”.

“I was never a supporter of Pinochet, but neither was I a supporter of a Chilean left that I believe that it has democratically regressed and validated violence and has become a statist left, so one tends to feel like an orphan in politics “, he assures after mentioning the high number of undecided, that the polls place in a range between 16% and 50%, among almost 15 million voters.

“Less polarized society”

“What happened after the social crisis of October (2019) is that centrifugal forces began to operate in politics and we began to exacerbate our conflicts”, he claims.

Despite the current crisis, “I think Chilean society is much less polarized than politics. Politics is maximizing its electoral results, triggering fears and conflicts ”.

“The simplest way to mobilize voters is through hatred: hatred of immigrants, hatred of gays, hatred of the businessman in the case of the left, hatred of the politician and the worst political moods have been provoked because they are mobilizing through of fear, and I want to fight backwards “, he claims.

“Generate stimuli”

He wants to preside over a government “that has the ability to understand the four major changes that Chile is experiencing: climate change, demographic change – it is the country that is aging the fastest (ndlr: the second in Latin America after Uruguay, according to the World Bank ) -, technological change (…); and the most important and the one that is least discussed, which is social change ”.

He maintains that since 2019, the country is going through “a mesocratic revolution, a middle class that was formed in the 90s with a country that grew but with a middle class that is bored of an elite that defines the country’s routes.”

After the economic blow caused by the pandemic, Chile will close 2021 with an expansion of 10.5%, but growth is expected to be around 2.5% in 2022 in a scenario of high fiscal debt, especially due to aid to families.

“We have to generate stimuli to the world of companies and SMEs so that the country grows rapidly”, dice.

Anyone can win

Married since 2008, father of three children and former Catholic -like many Chileans of his generation-, Sichel is in favor of equal marriage, adoption between homosexual couples, bet on gender equality and highlights the role of women remembering their mother, who raised him and his sister alone.

But Sichel He admits “having an issue there” with free abortion, since he believes that “life begins at conception”, therefore he supports abortion as it is now in force in Chile, on three grounds: risk of life, fetal infeasibility and rape.

The vote “will be defined on the day the ballot box is opened, which is what happened in Peru, what happened in Ecuador, what is happening in the world,” he says, also evoking the 2017 election between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen in France, where “the socialist world disappeared when nobody expected it, be careful!”.

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