Chile elections 2021: lack of public transport and traffic jams to go to vote mark Election Day

Overflowing urban bus stops in different parts of the country and kilometer-long traffic jams in Santiago mark electoral day in Chile, that this Sunday elects the successor of Sebastian Piñera between the left deputy Gabriel Boric and the far right lawyer Jose Antonio Kast.

In the peripheral towns of Puente Alto, Maipú, La Florida or San Miguel, citizens reported the local media waits of up to two hours to get on the bus.

“It is the last straw that older people have to wait so long in the sun, with this heat”Pensioner Mariana Vargas told EFE in the central neighborhood of La Reina.

Criticism also came from the electoral teams of both candidates, who encouraged citizens to share their cars and lead their neighbors to vote in these crucial and uncertain elections, in which the two candidates face the most disparate proposals since the return to democracy in 1990.

Boric he voted at the Patagonia school in the populous Prat neighborhood, in the east of Punta Arenas, his hometown (about 3,000 km south of Santiago), where many people turned out early in the morning with flags from the Magallanes region. Amid applause and shouts, the cry of: “Feel it, feel it, Boric president!”

“It is a day when we all have to collaborate. We are interested in getting the majority of people to vote ”, He said closet.

According Boric, “There are sectors where there is less than 50% of public transport working”: “Later we will see the responsibilities, the important thing now is to guarantee the vote.”

The label #SueltenLasMicros was for hours the most shared on the social networks of Chile, as a collective request to the Government to bring more vehicles into circulation.

Transport Minister Gloria Hutt acknowledged the problem and claimed to be doing “Every effort to mitigate it as quickly as possible.”

“There are episodes of congestion in some important axes, and this affects the fluidity of public transport routes when there is no exclusive route, with which there are waiting times that have increased”, said the official at a press conference.

“We deny those who are trying to install a fake about the size of a cathedral by saying that something has not been done so that people can go to vote. We have 75% more buses than a normal Sunday “added the government spokesman, Jaime Bellolio.

The latest polls agree that Boric would win the ballot with between 5 and 14 points of advantage, although experts affirm that the panorama is very uncertain given the narrow margin between the two candidates in the first round (2 percentage points) and the possible high abstention.

While Boric defends a welfare state with a feminist and environmentalist accent, closet He is a fervent 55-year-old Catholic who seeks to maintain the current neoliberal model with slight changes, lower taxes and confront irregular migration with a heavy hand.

Among the main challenges for the future will be to channel the social crisis that continues to exist since the 2019 protests; to lead the implementation of the norms of the new Constitution -in case they are approved in an exit plebiscite-, and to face the economic challenges left by the pandemic.

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