Sawt Falasteen - Leftist, far-right candidates advance to Chilean presidential run-off

With 99 percent of the results from Sunday's poll counted, Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of an eight-party coalition, won 26.85 percent of votes against 23.93 percent for Kast, the Servel electoral service said.

But her win -- a far tighter margin than polls had predicted -- was seen as an ominous sign for the second round and gave little cause for cheer at her election party.

Rodrigo Arellano, an analyst at Chile's University for Development, said it seemed "unlikely" she could win the December 14 run-off.

"Not only is her vote count low, but the combined total of the opposition candidates is almost more than double hers," he said, linking her score to strong anti-incumbent and anti-communist sentiment.

Ultra-right MP Johannes Kaiser, who came in fourth, said he would support any right-wing candidate in the run-off.

Jara, by contrast, can only expect to pick up a few points on the left.

"It's worse than the worst-case scenario for the left," Rodrigo Espinoza, a political analyst at Diego Portales University, told AFP.

Maverick economist Franco Parisi caused surprise by finishing third, while former conservative mayor Evelyn Matthei, the establishment choice, came in fifth.

Parisi refrained from backing either Jara or Kast in the run-off, saying they both needed to look for new voters "on the street."

- Violence and migration -

The election was dominated by deep concern over a surge in murders, kidnappings and extortion widely blamed on foreign crime gangs.

Kast, 59, has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile's border with Bolivia to keep out migrants from poorer countries to the north, such as Venezuela.

Following Sunday's results, he vowed to "rebuild" Chile after four years of center-left rule.

"Chile woke up tonight," Kast said, adding that while he was perhaps "not the most likeable," he felt he had a mandate from one million Chilean voters.

The right also secured a majority in simultaneous elections to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, according to partial results.

Jara, who served under outgoing left-wing President Gabriel Boric, struggled to overcome strong anticommunist sentiment in one of Latin America's most open economies.

"Don't let fear harden your hearts," Jara appealed to voters, insisting that the answer to crime was not to "come up with ideas, each more radical than the next."

The vote is seen as a bellwether of support for South America's left, which has lost power in Argentina and Bolivia in the past two years, and faces a stiff challenge in Colombian and Brazilian elections next year.

- Iron fist -

Chile is one of Latin America's safest countries, but the murder rate has doubled in a decade to exceed that of the United States.

The crime surge has happened in tandem with a doubling of the immigrant population since 2017, now comprising 8.8 percent of the population.

Wall-to-wall news coverage of crime has led to a clamor for a "mano dura" (iron fist).

"I hope that some day we'll go back to the way we were before," Mario Faundez, an 87-year-old retired salesman, who voted in the wealthy Santiago district of Providencia, told AFP.

"If we have to kill (criminals), so be it," he added.

Kast told cheering supporters that while the opposition had won Sunday's vote, "the only real victory will be when we defeat crime and drug trafficking, and close our borders."

The ultraconservative father of nine would be the first far-right leader since the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet if elected.

He has defended Pinochet, whose regime killed thousands of dissidents under the pretext of fighting communism during the Cold War.

Q.Jaber--SF-PST