Chile Christian Democratic candidate in fight to bring center-left to power

Santiago de Chile, Aug 21 (EFE).- Christian Democracy Senator Yasna Provoste will seek to return the Presidency of Chile to the center-left in the Nov. 21 elections, after prevailing Saturday in the citizen consultation her party organized, having been weakened by internal differences and bad electoral results.

The Senate leader, with her role at the head of the Upper House, acquired high visibility by leading the negotiations with President Sebastian Pinera to increase state aid in the context of a pandemic, a role that placed her in the polls as a possible presidential candidate.

“The clear signal that we want to say is that we are going to open La Moneda (seat of government) to this true Chile, to the Chile of the regions, of the communities, of the rural world, that is our commitment, to advance decisively in making ours, a country that sets aside exclusions,” she said while celebrating her triumph.

Minister of former presidents Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet, the current senator for the Atacama Region became the sole face of the center-left alliance called the Constituent Unit (UC), which brings together the DC with the Socialist Party (PS), the Party for Democracy (PPD), the Radical Party (PR), the Liberal Party (PL) and the New Deal movement.

With 70.2 percent of the polling stations scrutinized at the national level, the National Organizing Commission – a space made up of members of the six parties involved – reported that Provoste obtained 60.5 percent of the preferences, compared to 27 percent of the candidate Paula Narvaez, from the Socialist Party (PS), and 12.4 percent of the third candidate, Carlos Maldonado, from the Radical Party (PR).

The responsibility now rests on Provoste’s backs to return the center-left to power, which under coalitions with different denominations has shared power with the right for 30 years, but is currently facing a turbulent internal scenario.

The situation is complex even within DC itself, where Provoste has also starred in episodes that have evidenced these differences, she even being called to leave the party due to disagreements with parliamentarians from her own bench.

“We have managed to overcome a set of obstacles because we know that there is nothing more important than Chile,” Provoste said Saturday.

The DC was one of the parties with the worst results in the elections of last May where the delegates who make up the Constitutional Convention, the body in charge of drafting the new Constitution of the country, were elected.

Such was the electoral debacle that the party was left leaderless, but on Saturday, its president, Carmen Frei -daughter of former Chilean president Eduardo Frei Montalva-, vindicated Provoste’s triumph, noting that for them it is “important” to know that the party “is alive.” EFE

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