​Chile's outgoing President Sebastian Pinera and President-elect Gabriel Boric meet at the presidential palace La Moneda​​

Santiago de Chile, December 21 (RHC)-- Chilean President-elect Gabriel Boric has met with outgoing President Sebastian Pinera in Santiago, just hours after the left-wing candidate’s historic election victory.

The 35-year-old former student activist is set to become the South American nation’s youngest-ever president after he secured 56 percent support to defeat far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast in Sunday’s runoff.

Nearly 56 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot – the highest rate since voting stopped being mandatory in Chile in 2012.

In a tweet on Monday afternoon, Boric said he was visiting the presidential palace in Santiago at the invitation of Pinera, who will be stepping down in March and earlier offered Boric his government’s full support during the three-month transition.

On Monday, workers with a banner reading: “Hope won over fear.  Civil servants welcome you Mr. President,” met Boric at La Moneda ahead of his sit-down with Pinera.

“When I was in front of Salvador Allende’s bust, I thought about those who, like him, came before us,” Boric wrote on Twitter, referring to the ex-Chilean president whose government was overthrown in a bloody U.S.-backed military coup in 1973.

General Augusto Pinochet then took power, and thousands of Chileans were disappeared, tortured and killed during the ensuing dictatorship, which lasted until 1990 and whose legacy hung over the recent Chilean vote.  “His [Allende’s] dreams of a better Chile are what we will continue to build together,” Boric said.