Well, I thought it was mostly a respectful debate, at least better than what I am used to in US/UK.
That was a difficult debate for Kast. Firstly because it focused on areas where he is perhaps weaker like gay rights. However, he did try in his 1 minute at the end to mention security and terrorism issues that weren´t covered earlier which was a good way to finish. Also no mention of immigration in this debate. Of course, these have been covered extensively in other debates so I am not criticising the media, I am just saying that the lack of coverage of this in the very last debate may not be ideal for Kast. Given that this debate was the last one before the election, and was on earlier in the evening, it may have been viewed by more people.
Second problem for Kast was he had four opponents taking turns to throw punches at him. I guess that is what happens when you come out top of some polls. MEO in particular at this point seems to see his primary role as ensuring Kast doesn´t get elected, rather than trying to get himself elected! I think he would be genuinely happy to lose as long as Kast doesn´t win. Sichel seems to attack Kast as much as if not more than he attacks Boric at this point. Boric also was having a go at Kast a bit, and Provoste is not exactly Kast´s mate either. So Kast spent most of the whole first half of the debate defending himself against attacks, which means he didn´t get time to promote his own program. One of the female presenters I suspect was also not exactly a Kast voter.
Third problem for Kast is that he appears to have been caught on a mistake on his own program. I refer to this part point 385: âtodo nueva thermoelectrica que cumpla regulaciones exigentes debera usar carbon de alta calidad y baja humedadâ.
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When I read that a few weeks it clearly seems to allow for the possibility, even the likelihood, of new coal plants. It certainly doesn´t state that new plants won´t occur.
That is also how the TV presenter asking the question read it.
However Kast explained that the reference to ânueva thermoelectricaâ i.e. new coal plants refers to relatively newly built ones that are already existing, and that he won´t allow any new ones to be built from scratch from now on. I believe I heard laughter from other candidates in the background as he tried to explain his way out of it.
At best, that was a badly worded statement in the program.
More likely, someone else wrote that part of the program for him and he forgot what it said or was himself confused.
Thinking about it, specifically saying that newer plants must be regulated more carefully arguably makes less sense since older tech is more likely to be more polluting. Therefore, Kast seems to have misunderstood his own program, something which he almost seemed to be admitting when he said some words to the effect like âwhatever it says there, this is what I am telling you nowâ (something very roughly like that, as best as I can recollect)
Either way, it does highlight that what I personally think should be a very key issue - the urgent need to shut down coal plants given the climate crisis - is obviously a secondary issue for Kast that he doesn´t think much about.
Good news though in a way, because that means that we know tonight that there will be no more coal plants built whoever wins. So now just a question of how fast they close the existing ones as the only debate left.
I am pleased that Kast seemed to say (if I understand correctly) that if gay marriage was voted for by congress, he wouldn´t try to use his powers to oppose it. This is good, and unless he has said that before and I didn´t realize it, this means that today is arguably the day when marriage equality in Chile became an inevitability. Likely the law will be passed by next year, and marriages will happen by 2023.
It also hopefully reduces the likelihood of Kast being an undemocratic authoritarian strong man President who erodes the norms of democracy like other right wing Presidents have recently done (Bolsonaro, Trump, Boris Johnson, the ones in Hungary and maybe Poland).
I think ever since Sichel had a bad period and fell to 7% in the polls he has recovered and been very steady and has many good fairly centrist or centre right messages as well as liberal social messages that make sense. He actually seems like one of the more balanced candidates at the moment. However, it may be too late since people may still vote Kast to ensure one right wing candidate in the last two, or because they think that only Kast can actually win.
Overall I think MEO lost today. He might stop people voting for Kast, but they are not going to vote for him based on today since he didn´t give them enough reason to do so.
I thought Kast lost today as well. But mostly simply because it is harder to win when you have multiple opponents attacking you from all sides. He was a fraction less measured and composed than other debates.
I thought Sichel won today but it may be too late.
Boric or Provoste didnât make any mistakes but didnât offer anything new, so perhaps stayed the same or a slight victory. Provoste was a bit quiet.
Artes, who cares, but he may get slightly more in the final vote than earlier polls simply because any candidate on such a tiny vote share has to gain votes given that he is getting the same exposure as more credible candidates.
When I say some candidates won and others lost I don´t mean that in a big way. No-one totally kicked ass, or totally flunked it. There have been a ton of debates so far and it´s pretty much known by now who is who. I don´t think anyone won or lost more than 2% of the vote today.
