Far-Right politics has claimed yet another South American country – Chile – with the recent victory of the ultraconservative lawyer, Jose Antonio Kast who defeated his rival, the Left party candidate Jeannette Jara in the presidential race. Jara is a minister in the outgoing Communist government. Kast’s victory marks the latest win for the resurgent Right in Latin America. He joins Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, Argentina’s Javier Milei and Bolivia’s Rodrigo Paz who ended in October almost two decades of socialist rule in his country.
The election result of Chile was a foregone conclusion with the combined vote share of the Far-Right and Right forces far exceeding that of the Left candidate in the first round of election that failed to produce a clear-cut winner making the run-off inevitable. The surprising element of the outcome is that Chile is the most stable and peaceful among South American countries where the space for ultra-Right politics was supposed to be limited. However, crimes and entry of migrants from neighbouring Peru, Bolivia and Venezuela have been problematic for the average Chilean population. It is said that a common refrain of the average Chilean has been that day-to-day life is no longer as peaceful as before. This is an oversimplification of the reality since official crime data shows people taking refuge in Chile are much less prone to committing crimes than homegrown criminals. But, Kast eloquently leveraged voter fears over rising crime and migration to take the country to its sharpest rightward shift since the end of a ruthless dictatorship clamped by General Pinochet in 1990. He secured 58.30 per cent of the vote in the runoff with Leftist candidate Jara, managing to get 41.70 per cent.
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The political background of Kast reveals his rightist bent of mind from the beginning of his career and he conducted his presidential campaign in a clever manner, avoiding many of the controversial issues such as his family’s closeness to Pinochet, abortion and same-sex marriage. Being the father of nine children, he is a staunch opponent of abortion. His strategy was not to harp on issues on which his position is well known. Instead, he focused on a severe crackdown on crimes, setting up super-secure jails, creating a police force inspired by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to rapidly detain and expel illegal migrants in the country. He has also touted massive cuts in public spending and embracing a market economy with least government control as the answer to the livelihood crisis. He is an admirer of US President Donald Trump’s politics and has declared he would replicate the Trump-style Make America Great Again (MAGA) to safeguard Chile’s economic interests first.
However, Kast’s more radical proposals are likely to face pushback from a divided Congress. While Right-wing parties won seats in both legislative houses in a November general election, most of those gains came from more traditional parties. The Senate is evenly split between Left and Right-wing parties, while the swing vote in the lower legislative body belongs to the populist People’s Party. For example, changing the country’s abortion laws would require the support of more than half of the Congress to pass.
Chile is the world’s largest copper producer and a major producer of lithium. Expectations of less regulation and market-friendly policies have already buoyed the local stock market and equity benchmark. Among the contributory factors to the rise of the Far-Right is the people’s frustration due to the failure of the liberal political parties to deliver. In Chile’s case a section of the population is not also averse to the return of the dictatorial politics represented by Pinochet’s regime. The past close ties between Kast’s family and the Pinochet government do not make him untouchable to this section of the people. However, during the campaign Kast rather kept silent over facts such as his father being German and an ardent supporter of Nazism and his brother a minister during Pinochet’s rule.
The challenge before Kast will be how he can demonstrate his political skill to get his job done in the Congress where he will not have an absolute majority. He will need to forge a coalition with the right party if he hopes to govern without trying to trample down the country’s democratic gains, however noticeable or otherwise.
