Centre of no attention: Chile’s presidential election
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2021
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the vote’s second round has neared, the candidates have shifted, a bit, from their positions at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Which radical vision for the country will win out? The transition to electric vehicles may well stall, unless the chicken-and-egg problem of public chargers can be cracked. And a soaring history of “birdmen”, successful and otherwise.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. |
| 0:06.6 | I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 0:09.0 | Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:17.6 | Sales of electric vehicles are shooting up, |
| 0:23.6 | but the public chargers that will be required for them are not. Yet, we ask about a tricky chicken and egg problem, how to build out the infrastructure buyers will want before those buyers have bought. |
| 0:32.6 | And humans have always longed to soar like birds, |
| 0:39.3 | but history shows it's only men who actually try to do it. |
| 0:42.9 | There have been many successful attempts and many tragic failures, |
| 0:46.1 | and then there are those content merely to sing like birds. |
| 0:57.0 | First up, though. In the streets of Chile's capital, Santiago yesterday, hundreds of people celebrated the death of 99-year-old Lucia Iriart, |
| 1:12.7 | the widow of former dictator Augusto Pinochet. She was widely hated, believed to have had influence |
| 1:19.0 | over Pinochet as he oversaw a brutal and deadly regime that began with a military coup in 1973. |
| 1:26.8 | Her death comes just a few days before a runoff presidential election, |
| 1:30.9 | in which one of the candidates, the hard right Jose Cast, is a defender of the Pinochet legacy. |
| 1:37.0 | His opponent, Gabriel Boric, couldn't be further away on the political spectrum. |
| 1:42.3 | It's an election that 30 years into the democracy that bloomed after Pinochet |
| 1:47.0 | reveals just how divided the country remains. |
| 1:50.1 | You have two completely different visions for Chile on offer in the election of December 19th. |
| 1:56.3 | Anna Lankas is the economist, Argentina and Chile correspondent. |
| 2:00.1 | It's so wide open. |
| 2:01.6 | Everyone you speak to says this is going to be an election that will be determined |
| 2:05.6 | vote by vote. |
... |
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