Sunday, November 16th, it was Chile’s turn to choose between the Right and the Left. Like most Latin American countries, Chile has a presidential regime and the incumbent president is Gabriel Boric, who heads the most left-wing government since Salvador Allende. Boric heads an eco-feminist, semi-utopian and woke-friendlybrought to power by the “social outburst” of 2019, a set of street demonstrations triggered by students furious against the increase in the cost of transport.
But Boric had a major setback in 2022, when he tried to pass a new constitution and lost the popular referendum. Thus, the constitution resulting from the 1980 plebiscite continued to be in force, during the time of Augusto Pinochet’s military government and his “protected democracy”, which, after the general-president’s departure in 1990, became democratized.
Last Sunday the votes were counted. Of the eight competitors, none achieved an absolute majority, so there will be a second round on December 14th between the first two: the communist candidate, Jeannette Jara, with 26.8%, and the Republican Party candidate, José António Kast, with 24%.
Kast, may you media define as “ultra-rightist” and who had already run in the 2017 and 2021 presidential elections, declared after Trump’s victory: “Our ideas have already won in the United States, in Italy, in Argentina […] and in Chile they will also win.”
Maybe you’ll be right. Kast is 59 years old, has a law degree and is married to lawyer Maria Pia Adriasola. They both belong to the Catholic Schoenstatt movement. Maria Pia is a feminist who does not believe in quotas, is critical of homosexual marriage and only allows abortion in cases of rape, malformation of the fetus and risk to the mother’s life.
Big part two mediaalthough reluctantly, Kast is the winner in the second round: firstly, because, with 24%, he was closer to Jara than expected; secondly, because, of the six excluded candidates, two, Johannes Kaiser (13.9%) – the Chilean Milei, to the right of Kast – and Evelyn Matthei (12.5%) – from the “traditional right” –, have already congratulated Kast, appealing to their respective followers to vote for him.
It would be enough for Kaiser and Matthei voters to vote for Kast for Kast to surpass 50%, but although it is unlikely that the leftist candidate will surpass Kast, the truth is that there are no “owners of the votes”. As for third place in the first round, the populist Franco Parisi, leader of the People’s Party, with 19.7%, has not yet commented. Jara challenged him to support her to “contain the ultra-right”, but Parisi did not react, or had he not run with the slogan “Ni facho ni communist”. Faced with the alternative between the two “extremes”, Parisi proposes “that they, those qualified for the final, convince voters”.
In any case, after the victory of Rodrigo Paz in Bolivia and Milei in Argentina, the “pink wave” seems to be attenuating in South America. And if Chile decides for the Right, there will even be a tie: six (Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru… and Chile) for the Right; and six (Brazil, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela) for the Left.
And, this time, the Right doesn’t come through coups or military dictatorships – it comes through the ballot box, through the people’s vote. This is what costs the Left the most and, above all, the journalistic and commentary community.
Political scientist and writer. The author writes according to the old spelling