Five days before the second presidential round in Chile, the two candidates in the running, the left-wing communist Jeannette Jara, and the right-wing standard bearer, José Antonio Kast, leader of the Republican Party, participated in a tense final televised debate, perhaps the most aggressive we have seen in this campaign for the 2026-2030 presidency. Jara, as he has done since the first round on November 16, chose to ruthlessly question his opponent. He criticized him for lacking experience, not responding, making mistakes, not explaining his measurements, not recognizing mistakes and being nervous, according to him. Kast, who in recent weeks has been cautious – he is in the lead, according to the last known poll, therefore in a wait-and-see position – called Jara the “continuity candidate” of the government of Gabriel Boric, engaged in intense discussions with the left-wing candidate, fought to gain time and, above all, linked Chile’s problems with the last administration, of which Jara was part. “There are only two paths: continuity or change,” said Kast, who knows that since 2010 the presidential election in Chile has been won by the opposition to the current government.
One of the most tense moments came when Jara told him that she believed he was living in a “glass box,” referring to the protective armored glass that ultraconservatives used at some of his rallies. Kast replied: “I suddenly have to use glass because there are people in other countries who have assassinated presidential candidates. What happens if something happens to me? So you’re going to say, actually I was right. They killed one in Ecuador, in Colombia, there were attacks on others. Is that what you’re looking for?”
During a press conference after the debate, Kast justified that the use of glass is due to the fact that he was attacked in the past during his previous candidacies, in 2017 and 2021. “I have been attacked several times.” Jara, for his part, responded after the debate by saying that the Carabineros had ruled out the candidate as being in danger.
The ultra-conservative candidate, who for the second round is supported by the traditional and libertarian right – he was accompanied on the television channel by Johannes Kaiser, who reached fourth place in the first round -, tried in this debate to ease the tension on some of the latest controversies which marked this last part of the campaign. He said he would not eliminate the law that establishes a maximum of 40 hours of work per week nor the PGU (the guaranteed universal pension, for people who receive low pensions), a doubt that remains since he announced that he would remove 6 billion dollars from the Treasury in the first 18 months of a possible government, but which he did not explain. “I would never forgive a child molester,” Kast said, regarding the statements of Republican Congressman José Carlos Meza, who opened the door to this measure. Concerning the pardons granted to human rights violators under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, Kast put on the table the examination of cases like that of the young conscripts who, in 1973, were part of the state repression: “What possibility did they have of knowing what was happening. There, we could see him again. I think there must be a certain humanity.”
Public security and the control of irregular immigration were two of the priority issues of this Chilean presidential campaign and were at the heart of the televised debates. Asked by the left-wing candidate about the measures he will take with undocumented foreigners, the Republican replied: “Your president could not even open a humanitarian corridor.” Kast also confirmed that irregular migrant parents whose children were born in Chile – so they have nationality – will have to choose between leaving with their children or leaving them here and being taken care of by the state. “We always want to take care and protect the value of family. But when there are people who have broken the law, they have to make a decision. If they don’t want to take their children, we will have to take responsibility for that,” Kast said. Jara, for his part, opted for the registration of the nearly 330,000 irregulars remaining in Chile. “Those who do not register will be expelled,” declared the left-wing candidate.
Kast has repeatedly said that his political opponents are blinded by ideology, while Jara has constantly appealed to her experience and to a vision of Chile that contrasts with that of the ultra-conservatives: “Chile is not a disaster,” she said, who questioned her opponent because, according to her, he only criticized her and did not explain how she would make her proposals. For the Republican, on the other hand, Chile is going through a multiple crisis: that of insecurity, due to low economic growth and the high number of irregular migrants who are especially putting strain on working-class neighborhoods. This is why Kast is promising an “emergency government,” as he calls it.
The candidates showed this evening that they had a diametrically different project for Chile, on virtually all the issues consulted by journalists. There was no significant coincidence – apart from the modernization of the state, although with different accents – and Kast and Jara dedicated themselves, as seems obvious in this type of spaces, to highlighting their differences. The candidate of the Chilean ruling party, who once again tried to distance herself from the Boric government – “when you want to talk to President Boric, talk to him,” she told Kast – assured that “it is obvious that Nicolás Maduro must leave power.” And when Kast declared that “Maduro had 92 days to leave power” – referring to March 11, the start date of the next Chilean administration, in an apparent error – Jara bluntly called on him to admit his mistake. “Why don’t you admit that you were wrong and that you said something stupid? That would humanize you and people would believe you a little more,” he said, in one of the many moments of confrontation between the two, a few days before a presidential election that does not stop the cities and their inhabitants, focused in these hot December days, rather on buying Christmas gifts.
About The Author
