Chile appears set to elect its most right-wing president in decades as Jose Antonio Kast leads on a platform of deporting migrants and fighting crime
SANTIAGO: Chilean voters appeared poised to elect the most right-wing presidential candidate in 35 years of democracy on Sunday, with first results showing Jose Antonio Kast with a commanding lead.
With three million votes counted, about 20% of the total, Kast was 20 points ahead of his rival Jeannette Jara, a Communist Party member heading a broad leftist coalition.
Kast had 60% of the vote to Jara’s 40%, according to official results from the Electoral Service.
In central Santiago, Kast supporters beeped their car horns and cheered his apparent victory.
It would be a lucky third attempt for the 59-year-old, who has previously made two failed bids for the presidency.
He appears to have a sizable mandate after running on a tough-on-crime and anti-migrant message.
After casting his vote near Santiago, Kast promised to seek unity after a sometimes bitter campaign.
“The winner will have to be the president of all Chileans,” he said.
Once one of the safest and most prosperous countries in the Americas, Chile has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, violent social protests and an influx of organised crime.
Kast is far to the right of most Chileans on many issues.
But many Chileans fed up with high crime and slow growth during four years of leftist rule said they will vote for change, despite misgivings.
Kast has vowed to deport hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants, opposed abortion without exceptions, and voiced support for the bloody dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
Santiago homemaker Ursula Villalobos, 44, said she planned to vote for Kast and was willing to accept some radical changes if they bring safety.
“What’s important is that people can leave their homes without fear and return at night without worrying that something will happen to them on street corners,” she told AFP.
Polls show more than 60% of Chileans think security is the top issue facing the country, far eclipsing issues like the economy, healthcare or education.
And while statistics show that violent crime has risen in the last 10 years, fears about crime have risen even faster.
Kast’s hardline positions have also raised fears that he will edge Chile back toward the old days of a dictatorship that killed or disappeared more than 3,000 of its own citizens.
“I’m fearful because I think we are going to have a lot of repression,” said 71-year-old retiree Cecilia Mora, who said that “under no circumstances” would she vote for Kast.
“The candidate of the right reminds me a lot of the dictatorship. I lived through the dictatorship. I was young, but I lived through it, suffered through it.”
“I see him as a Pinochet out of uniform,” she said.
Pinochet left power in 1990, after Chileans rejected a bid to extend his 17-year rule via referendum.
As a university student, Kast campaigned for the pro-Pinochet vote.
His family background has also raised questions, with media investigations revealing that Kast’s German-born father was a member of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party.
Kast insists his father was a forced conscript and did not support the Nazis.
Jara led the first round of voting in November, but right-wing candidates garnered a majority of the vote.
The 51-year-old’s stint as labour minister under outgoing President Gabriel Boric has proven to be an Achilles’ Heel.
Boric’s term was crippled by repeated failed attempts to reform the Pinochet-era constitution.
Since 2010, Chileans have alternated between left- and right-wing governments at every presidential election.
In this election, voting is compulsory for the first time in more than a decade, with almost 16 million citizens registered to vote. – AFP
