President-elect José Antonio Kast, representative of the right, will take office as head of state on March 11, 2026, but starting this Monday and over the next few months his team will refine the details of his landing at the Palace of The small room. The operational center is located at La Gloria 88, in Las Condes, and it is planned to advance under the so-called Plan Desafío 90, led by economist Bernardo Fontaine. The objective is to prepare a battery of measures to be applied during the first three months of the government to “make a difference and implement real and profound changes”, mainly in terms of immigration, security and judicial reform. At the press briefing after his vote on Sunday, Kast said he would invite doctors, neighbors, teachers and the general public to collaborate and solve problems. “We don’t want anyone to be forgotten in Chile,” he said.
One of the first measures that will be taken in La Moneda chica, according to local media, will be the creation of a political committee made up of the right-wing parties that supported him during his candidacy in the second round: those of the Chili Vamos coalition, the traditional right, the National Libertarian Party, the Social-Christian Party and the two formations that define themselves as center, the Yellows and the Democrats. The idea is that in the coming weeks they will be able to seal a programmatic agreement so that there is “fluid coordination”, at least at the start of the mandate. Even if during the second round of campaign, the leaders of the parties which supported Kast held frequent meetings with the Republicans, it is now that the weight of each in the future government will be defined. This is the first time that the Republican Party has come to power and it will therefore be a first test of its negotiating and leadership skills.
Fontaine’s team coordinates those responsible for each area and their objectives, which include the immediate presentation of bills and actions of state management: “The idea is that each minister arrives with a timetable and defined action tasks.” It is also expected that the working group of Jorge Quiroz, the Republican’s economic advisor, who has been working for several months to implement the promised fiscal adjustment of $6 billion over the first 18 months in La Moneda, will also be installed in La Moneda Chica. Throughout the campaign, Kast and his team were asked where the economic cuts would be made and whether they would affect the social benefit programs that benefit the most vulnerable. The answer was never entirely clear, although the president-elect reiterated that it would not impact subsidies.
Kast’s communications team, led by journalist María Paz Fadel, will also move to the new offices. It is likely that the housing, public finance and social committees, formed some time ago, will join the large center of operations on Calle La Gloria.
For the past few months, Republicans have been considering measures that do not need to pass through Congress and those that do, at least initially, will focus on security and migration – one of the bills likely to be introduced first will be one that makes illegal entry a misdemeanor. As this is one of the main concerns of Chileans, they are betting that they will not encounter greater resistance to advance them during the first months of their mandate, at least in the opposition parties to the government of Gabriel Boric.
In the legislative elections last November, the far-right coalition won 42 deputies, which, added to the 34 of the traditional right, reaches 76 parliamentarians in a chamber of 155 which will also begin its cycle next March. The right did not reach a majority because the list of the populist Franco Parisi – although opposed to Boric, he declared himself “neither fascist nor communist” – surprisingly reached 14 seats.
To coordinate the work of Congress, it turned out that the president of the Republican Party and senator-elect of Valparaíso, Arturo Squella, plays a key role. Squella, who has accompanied Kast since his first presidential attempt in 2017, has already had conversations with some parliamentarians, including from the left, according to local media, and thus smoothed out the discussions and did not begin the mandate with very marked disagreements between the ruling party and the opposition.
The expectations Kast has raised during his campaign are high, with a speech focused on “radical change” and that “everything will be fine.” Aware of the great unfounded hopes of citizens, the campaign director for the second round, engineer Martín Arrau, declared a few weeks ago to Diario Financiero in an attempt to control them: “If anyone expects everything to change on the first day, it won’t be like that. One of the measures on which we will certainly focus is that which will be taken to expel the 330,000 migrants living in an irregular situation in Chile. For weeks, Kast has been counting how many days they have left to voluntarily leave the South American country, before their arrival in the government. Those who do not leave on their own will be searched and deported, the Republican said, although he also suggested that it would be the undocumented immigrants’ employers who would pay for the tickets, an idea considered unworkable.
Another question that arises is that of the place of residence of the president-elect and his wife, the lawyer Pía Adriasola, the new First Lady. The couple lives in Paine, a rural town an hour south of Santiago. With traffic jams, the transfer to the center of the capital can take up to an hour and a half. One option considered by the couple, according to local media, would be to move to La Moneda. The last president to do the same was Carlos Ibáñez del Campo in the middle of the last century and it would involve reforming an area of the palace, with the authorization of the National Monuments Council, in order to install the Kast Adriasola there.
About The Author
