Far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast wins Chilean presidential runoff election: preliminary results

Far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast of the Republican Party won Chile's presidential runoff election on Sunday to become the country's 38th president, according to preliminary results.

According to Chile's Electoral Service, with 99.33 percent of the votes counted in the runoff, Kast won 58.18 percent, compared with 41.82 percent for Jeannette Jara, candidate of Chile's ruling left-wing coalition.

Jara conceded defeat to Kast and congratulated him on social media. Current President Gabriel Boric also congratulated Kast on his victory.

Kast, 59, will take office on March 11, 2026.

The runoff came after a first round of voting on Nov 16 in which Kast and Jara emerged as the top two candidates.

According to the Chilean law, a candidate who secures more than 50 percent of the votes in the first round is elected outright. If no contender reaches that threshold, the two leading candidates advance to a second round, with the candidate who receives the most votes taking the presidency.

The president serves a four-year term, and Chile's constitution prohibits presidents from immediate re-election.

Far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast wins Chilean presidential runoff election: preliminary results

Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng met with European Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maros Sefcovic on Friday in Beijing. The two sides exchanged views on bilateral economic and trade relations.

He, who is also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said China always attaches high importance to growing its economic and trade ties with the European Union (EU) and stands ready to work with the European side to fully implement the important consensus reached by leaders of the two sides.

He called on the two sides to give full play to the role of the China-EU trade and investment consultation mechanism, uphold the new positioning of China and the EU as each other's stable and balanced key trading partners, maintain ongoing dialogue, properly handle differences, and advance the sound and steady development of bilateral economic and trade relations.

Sefcovic stated that China is an important economic and trade partner of the EU. The EU is ready to continue advancing the trade and investment consultation, step up communication and jointly promote cooperation, he added.

Chinese vice premier meets European commissioner for trade, economic security