Chile Election

The first round of the Chilean national elections last Sunday showed some important clues as to the future of the South American nation. Current Minister of Labor and Social Welfare and Communist Party member Jeannette Jara led the field with 26.8% of the vote. However, four other candidates received double-digit shares. All four nominees are strongly right-wing, meaning that the majority of voters are likely to throw their support behind Jara’s runoff election rival José Antonio Kast. 

Kast, a lawyer running a third time for the presidency, received 23.9% of the vote. He has a long history in politics, being involved in right-wing movements and think tanks since the 1990s. A member of a prominent and influential conservative family, Kast’s father was a German immigrant and Nazi party member turned sausage salesman who fled to Chile after World War II. Several of his siblings have also been involved in politics, such as his late brother Miguel, who was an economist in the Chicago School vein that ran the central bank under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in the 20th century. Kast shares similar views with many of his family members, believing in neoliberal economic strategies and staunchly conservative social policies. He is against abortion, same-sex marriage, open immigration, and birth control. 

The fifty-nine year old’s hard-right views are the practical antithesis of his main opponent’s, and of those of the incumbent president, Gabriel Boric. The seeming ideological drift by voters from an avowed communist president to perhaps the most right-wing platform since Pinochet shows how much the political landscape has changed in three years. Kast ran his campaign on promises to crack down on organized crime and illegal immigration. Dissatisfaction with the Boric administration’s failure to deliver on some of its promises, as well as a lack of any viable political center to turn to, may have helped propel the relatively extreme candidate into the position of favorite in the upcoming election. 

While he has yet to make it past the goal post, a Kast government would likely lead to some problematic outcomes. Less of the federal budget would be allocated to popular social programs, instead being relocated to funding the police and military. There would also be questions about Chile’s large lithium reserve, toward which the current government has promoted protectionist policies in order to prevent exploitation by foreign actors and increase government revenue. A Kast presidency would also certainly be more amiable with current right-wing leaders, such as Javier Milei of Argentina and Donald Trump. In turn, relations might become more strained with local left-wing governments like Brazil and Colombia. Regardless of who ends up winning the runoff election on December 14th, the outcome will have a great impact on the future of both Chile and the wider region.