José Antonio Kast’s secret plan for a millionaire’s haircut and the specter of social outbreak in Chile

chili The election this Sunday will decide who will govern for the next four years. And in the country’s first compulsory presidential election since the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, many will vote for the lesser evil in a climate of discontent social dissatisfaction, disappointment and anger against successive governments that promised changes to improve living conditions and did not deliver the results that a large part of society expected.

After a tough election campaign full of counter-accusations and few concrete proposals, the governing party Jeannette Jara and the right-wing conservative opposition José Antonio Kast They are fighting for the presidency.

Although the former labor minister in Gabriel Boric’s government won on November 16 in the first round of voting with 26.8% of the vote, compared to 23.9% for the leader of the Republican Party, the balance now seems to be clearly shifting to the side of the opposition, which has already received the support of the other two right-wing leaders who ran a month ago, Evelyn Matthei and Johannes Kaiser.

Kast would have already secured 50% of the votes. And this number could increase if he manages to also win the votes of right-wing populist Franco Parisi, who received 19.7% (more than 2.5 million votes) in the first round. Although the leader of the People’s Party called for a zero or zero vote to reject two extremist candidates, it is not clear what these voters will do this Sunday.

Which is obvious to various analysts they consulted Clarion is that the vote for Parisi was an expression of protest and Rejection of the political class This did not solve the problems of the Chilean middle class. Boric came to power amid the winds of change demanded by the masses in the streets during the social outbreak in 2019, but that momentum began to fade.

The promises of change collided with reality, and in practice the current government made little progress in addressing decades of enormous inequality and major barriers to access, for example, to basic services such as health and quality public education, two of the main demands of those days of intense protests that began in October 2019 in response to the increase in subway fares and dragged on for months to denounce the deep social divide left by the legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship.

“One of the keys to this election is that there is strong social, political and economic unrest, strong anti-government unrest,” political analyst Roberto Munita of Andrés Bello University in Chile told this envoy.

“The president was losing support. When he took office four years ago, there were inflated expectations. His banner was renewal.

That’s why Jara, even though it’s the official letter has done everything to show distance from the current government And he presents himself as a personality capable of solving the problems of the most neglected sectors. He promises to expand the social rights that have been partially achieved during these four years and to promote further improvements in the areas of health, education, minimum wage and pensions.

In this scenario, Kast’s plan to cut government spending by up to $6 billion if he wins the presidency caused controversy throughout the campaign, but the debate escalated particularly in recent days. The conservative candidate has been criticized since the first election campaign because he never explained in detail how he plans to implement this multi-million dollar cut, with which he promises to stimulate the economy and make Chile grow again.

Days ago, a former mayor from Kast’s party, now elected senator, spoke honestly to the media: “There will be budget cuts, which of course we won’t say because they will paralyze the country the next day.” If we say it, the street will be on fire“Admitted Rodolfo Carter, one of the Republican candidate’s main spokesmen, in an interview on the show Everything will be finefrom the canal About X.

Her words prompted an almost immediate reaction from the official candidate. “The problem with the statements made by candidate Kast’s spokesman is that they are very serious, because what he says is that cuts are planned that will obviously affect social rights,” Jara explained during a campaign tour.

He added that what Carter said “is consistent with what we have been pointing out all along: that his proposals are secret, that they are hidden from the public, and that is serious, because to be president of the Republic you have to be transparent.”

The ruling party claims that this tax proposal from the far-right leader is unworkable without affecting important social programs funded by the state budget, such as free universities or a universal pension.

But the questions about this measure weren’t just directed at Jara’s team. Evelyn Matthei – the most moderate right-wing candidate – and her economic team competed in the first round They had already warned that these cuts could not be implemented without affecting some social services. And on more than one occasion, the former mayor of Providencia asked Kast to explain this cut.

Kast, meanwhile, defended Carter’s statements. The senator-elect, he said, “is absolutely right. We will present our government plan on March 11,” the day the future government takes office.

But the controversy didn’t end there. The executive itself came to the floor this Friday to respond. The minister’s spokeswoman, Camila Vallejo, called for “transparency and information about what the measures or the implementation of the candidates’ commitments or proposals will be.”

“When information is concealed, when there is little transparency, ultimately we are not properly caring for our democracy, we are not properly caring for the right of our compatriots to be fully informed and to be aware of what will justify or motivate their vote,” he said in statements to the media.

In addition, he reiterated the thought that President Boric had expressed more than once in recent days: “Chile is not falling apart.” Vallejo assured that there is “the story that Chile is falling apart” and “that there is a lack of respect for the country. We all built this country, the country has normalized, the country is growing.” In the election this Sunday, Chileans will say who they believe in.