Santiago (AFP) - Leftist candidate Jeannette Jara and far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast will go head-to-head in Chile’s presidential run-off after topping Sunday’s first round of voting in an election dominated by fears of violent crime.

With 99 percent of the results counted, Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of an eight-party coalition, won 26.85 percent, compared to 23.93 percent for Kast, the Servel electoral service said.

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.

After Sunday’s results came in, he vowed to “rebuild” Chile after four years of center-left rule, which he termed “maybe the worst government in Chile’s democratic history.”

“Chile woke up tonight,” the straight-laced, ultraconservative father of nine declared, adding that while he was perhaps “not the most likeable,” he felt he had a mandate from 1 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 in the administration of outgoing left-wing President Gabriel Boric, struggled to overcome strong anticommunist sentiment in one of Latin America’s most open economies.

Her win, by a far shorter 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 pointed out, linking her score to strong anti-incumbent and anti-communist sentiment.

“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.

Maverick economist Franco Parisi caused surprise by finishing third, ahead of ultra-right MP Johannes Kaiser, and former conservative mayor Evelyn Matthei, the establishment choice, in fifth.

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

- 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.

A combative 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.