The conservative José Antonio Kast confirmed the favoritism he carried throughout the campaign for the second round and was elected president of Chile this Sunday 14. Thus, the La Moneda Palace will be occupied by the right after four years under the left-wing government of Gabriel Boric. Kast will be the first president to openly admire the dictator Augusto Pinochet.
With 25% of the votes counted, Kast holds 59% of the votes against 40% for government candidate Jeannette Jara, from the Communist Party. With an advantage of almost 20 percentage points for Kast, the statistical projections of the Chilean electoral court consider the victory irreversible.
Polls of voting intentions already showed a clear advantage for the conservative after he managed to gather the votes of the other right-wing candidates beaten in the first round.
José Antonio Kast is a 59-year-old lawyer, devout Catholic and father of nine children. This was his third time running for La Moneda, having been defeated in the past mainly due to his gender issues.
The candidate then learned from his defeats, left aside the so-called customary guidelines, added women to his campaign and became more acceptable to Chileans, especially in the face of an opponent from the Communist Party.
This time, he ran as a candidate for the Republican Party, which he founded five years ago because he considered the traditional right too soft. One of the authors of his biography, María José Hinojosa, described Kast, in an interview with Estadão, as a “charmer with messianic reveries” and who considers himself “the savior of Chile.”
Among his main promises are Chile adopting a tougher approach to crime and deporting around 340,000 irregular immigrants., mainly Venezuelans. However, he did not specify how he would keep these promises, because they require a lot of money and a partnership with the countries of the deportees – which is not the case with Venezuela.
After voting in the town of Paine, 40 km from Santiago, Kast was cheered by a crowd who shouted “President!”. He promised a unity government. “Whoever wins will have to be president of all Chileans,” he told reporters after the vote.
“I’m going to vote for Kast because he gives me more confidence. Communism has never been positive anywhere in the world,” he said. AFP José González, a 74-year-old truck driver, queues to vote in central Santiago.
Kast repeatedly declared during his campaign that “the country is falling apart.” In his public appearances, behind bulletproof glass in one of the region’s safest countries, he portrays Chile almost as a failed state dominated by drug trafficking, a country that has moved away from the “economic miracle” that made it one of Latin America’s most prosperous nations.
“What matters, more than social benefits, are jobs and security. That people can leave their homes without fear and return at night without thinking that something will happen to them around the corner,” he said. AFP Ursula Villalobos, a 44-year-old housewife who voted for Kast.
According to an Ipsos survey from October, 63% of Chileans say crime and violence are their biggest concerns, followed by low economic growth. Experts point out, however, that the perception of fear in Chile is much greater than the actual crime figures.
Homicides have doubled over the past decade, although they have been declining for two years. Despite this, there has been an increase in violent crimes, such as kidnappings and extortion, coinciding with the arrival in the country of Venezuelan, Colombian and Peruvian gangs, such as the Tren de Aragua, from Venezuela.
The left-wing government of Gabriel Boric, a former student leader who came to power after massive protests in 2019, failed to reform Pinochet’s Constitution, which “completely undermined his political support”, according to Robert Funk, a political science professor at the University of Chile.
Kast supported the military dictatorship and claims that if Pinochet were alive he would vote for him. But in this latest campaign, he has avoided discussing this and other topics that could cost him votes, such as his opposition to abortion under any circumstances.
Journalistic investigations revealed, in 2021, that Kast’s father, born in Germany, was a member of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party. However, Kast claims his father was forcibly conscripted into the German army during World War II and denies supporting the Nazi movement.
Since 2010, the right and the left have alternated in power in Chile in each presidential election. In 2021, after a dispute between Boric and Kast in the second round, Chile had its most left-wing government in history, although Boric moved toward the center after the government’s constant defeats in Congress and the Constituent Assembly.
With Kast’s victory, “we shouldn’t think he has a very strong mandate to do what he wants,” because many people are voting for him out of fear of Jara, Funk said. They will vote for him mainly “despite his support for Pinochet, not because of his support for Pinochet.”
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