The Chilean capital Santiago awoke on Wednesday to a mixture of celebration and tension.
Jose Antonio Kast was elected in November with just over 58 per cent of the vote, defeating the Chilean Communist Party.
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During the campaign, he adopted a strategy clearly modelled on US President Donald Trump’s playbook, promising to build a wall along the border with Bolivia to stem irregular migration and to tackle the surge in crime he sought to blame on Venezuelan refugees the country had taken in.
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How Maduro’s abduction is set to change Latin America
How Maduro’s abduction is set to change Latin America
Yet despite his ambitions to lead a Latin American alliance of governments aligned with the United States, the president-elect now finds himself entangled in a scandal that has paralysed the country for weeks and fractured the transition preparations.
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Trouble began when local media revealed that, just weeks before the end of his term, the administration of the left-wing president Gabriel Boric had quietly greenlit a fibre-optic cable initiative managed by China Mobile International connecting the country to Hong Kong.
