When, on the night of this Sunday, December 14, the Chilean Electoral Service defined with the speed and efficiency that characterizes which of the candidates for the President of Chile won – Jeannette Jara, communist activist, representative of the left, and José Antonio Kast, leader of the extremist Republican Party, right-wing candidate -, and President Gabriel Boric, activist of the Frente Amplio, he will pick up the phone to greet the triumphant in a message that all Chileans will be able to watch on their screen. televisions and cell phones. It is a tradition in Chilean politics and reaffirms, once again, the institutional path that has followed the South American country since its return to democracy in 1990, regardless of the ferocity of each campaign. This will of course be the first moment of farewell to Boric de La Moneda, who will leave the Presidential Palace on March 11, 2026 and, barely 40 years old, will settle into the curious role of ex-president while still being so young.
Former president Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) only repeated a phrase that he attributed to his Spanish friend Felipe González: “Ex-presidents are like Chinese jars in small departments. They all have great value, but they don’t know where to put them and, secretly, they hope that a child gives them a codazo and breaks them. » The role that Boric will assume will be complex: he will benefit from regimes and missions for office and personal expenses, like his predecessors, as well as the security measures that the State of Chile puts at his disposal, but it will be difficult for him to lock himself into a foundation or an international organization.
He also particularly enjoys his travels (during presidential tours he only knew the buildings) and the idea of continuing to study formally (he graduated from the Derecho of the University of Chile), even if he just read, which he did a lot in his free time. Boric will challenge the tradition of former Chilean presidents, who settle into an important but discreet social space: he will continue to do politics, as he has done since he was a high school student in his hometown, Punta Arenas.
If the polls are anything to go by, if you’re here this Sunday, Boric will have his work cut out for him. The Chilean izquierda y centroizquierda will find itself confronted with the unpleasant moment of having to analyze its role in Chile in the 21st century, where its discourse does not reach the popular classes. As is the case in other parts of the world, in less advantaged sectors of society, people support radical right options — like Kast, who focused his speech on crime control, irregular migration and economic growth — and populist alternatives, like those of Franco Parisi, who received 20% in the first race in November. The underlying question is resolved not only with the alliance politics of the current bureaucracy which has little or nothing to do with the citizens (the center grouped under the so-called Democratic Socialism, which together with Boric’s Frente Amplio and the Partido Comunista conform to the government), but through a thorough debate on the project which addresses its new concerns. citizenship. In this context, Boric will play a role, but it is not obvious since he will probably have to remain silent for a while. It will not be at least, at least at the beginning, from a front line, and perhaps from the bottom, from the territory, in a concept that uses the new political generation of the left which is in the lead.
Boric will call Kast and meet with him next week, to win Sunday’s ultraconservative elections, as everyone indicates, and it will be a difficult moment for the Chilean government, almost unimaginable a few years ago. At the end of 2021, when Boric won the presidency before Kast himself, the current president, Sebastián Piñera, called him in a very cordial message from both of them. On this occasion, the scene was also surreal, as Boric and his supporters strongly opposed his leadership, especially after the social outburst of October 2019, and until they sought to overthrow it in Parliament.
But Piñera has been the most moderate the Chilean government has ever had — and probably will be, as analyst Pablo Ortúzar says — and Kast represents a different world that hasn’t happened to the Chilean government in the last 35 years: ultraconservative on individual liberties, crony of the state and its employees (wanting to cut $6.5 billion in the first 18 months of the administration, even though he has promised not to not affect social rights already acquired). representative of a new force, like the Republican Party, which has acquired significant weight in Parliament, but does not reach a majority among its members. Deberán will govern, given the absence of boards, with the other sectors of the government, in particular with all of the moderates of Chile Vamos, the late Piñera, and this new nomenclature is still an uncertain board of directors. The left, given its conformation, will mainly have a space to exercise opposition: the Senate.
Part of the defeat of Jara, of production, will be linked to the rejection of the Boric government. According to the Cadem survey last Sunday, 37% approve of the president’s management and 57% fail. It is a percentage that has reached the high price of its predecessors, since the support has been constant during these four years, where it averaged around 30%, but is insufficient to obtain a majority. Kast has labeled Jara as a candidate for continuity – she was Minister of Labor and this entails a very complex detachment from the current leadership – while trying to convince, with difficulty, that her proposal is distinct. Boric and the team, led by Kast, will begin a long night of reflections on the role played by the Government and from spaces like the Constitutional Convention, whose extreme proposal for the new Constitution lost 62% against 38% in September 2022.
Jara’s failure will be blamed on the Executive, even if since 2006 no Chilean president has managed to pass the presidential label other than his own sign (which has always won over the opposition). As I said in an interview with EL PAIS the social democratic leader Carolina Tohá, Minister of the Interior of Boric last March, it was difficult to conquer La Moneda for the period 2026-2030. But it wasn’t impossible. “It’s true that you have to aim for the best,” said Tohá, who participated in the primaries but lost heartbreakingly to Jara.
They assure that Boric personally agrees with Kast’s triumph, with the options of regaining power, of repeating this four-year cycle of shuttling between right and left. However, even if there is an obvious political ego in Boric, which pushes him to challenge political adversaries like Kast and to defend his work — especially in the first Vuelta campaign, because in the second stage he controlled himself — it is not clear that the triumph of the ultra is part of a plan to return in 2030. It is not excluded that he intends to do it again — in Chile, all former presidents have already wanted come back — especially given their small age. The new decision, however, proposes a long cycle, of 8 or 12 years, and this story has not yet begun to be written.
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