In the electoral campaign, José Antonio Kast wears formal attire. A father of nine, an opponent of gay marriage and abortion, this blond, blue-eyed lawyer promises to lower taxes and build a ditch on the border to stop immigration. The elections this Sunday in Chile, he says, are a contest between freedom and totalitarianism.
The 55-year-old candidate, considered a secondary card four years ago when he obtained only 8% of the vote, is today one step away from winning the presidency. If he defeats his opponent Gabriel Boric – the race is very close and there are many undecided – he will be, by far, the most conservative president of Chile in three decades.
”The Kast phenomenon, in part at least, is due to the exceptional situations that Chile has experienced in the last two years”Said Claudia Heiss, director of political science at the Institute of Public Affairs of the University of Chile. He noted that the violent protests for inequality, followed by the pandemic, “they fed an agenda of the extreme right that promises order and security ”.
The former parliamentarian is sometimes called the Donald Trump of the Andean region and is compared to the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro. These analogies are somewhat misleading.
Eloquent and composed, Kast is neither a braggart nor a troublemaker. When he shouted “Long live Chile!” To his supporters after his victory in the first round of elections last month, it sounded more uncomfortable than inspiring. When asked in a recent television interview if her opponent was a “puppet”From the Communist Party, he objected, saying there was no reason to use insulting language, although he does not hesitate to do so when speaking of the Communists. Is defined as “the candidate of common sense “.
The son of German immigrants and the brother of a former minister of the late dictator Augusto Pinochet, Kast represents for some the voice of order and security and for others an endorsement of inequality and authoritarianism. He has said that if Augusto Pinochet were alive today, the general would vote for him.
Boric, his opponent, couldn’t be more different. A 35-year-old, bearded and tattooed former student leader, an ally of the Communist Party, wants more taxes, more state involvement and free abortion. He would be the most left-wing head of state in Chile since the 1970s, when the socialist Salvador Allende was overthrown by Pinochet.
In many ways, the electoral contest between the two suggests that 30 years of moderate politics and exceptional economic growth fueled by foreign investment have not left aside the fury and divisions of those battles of half a century ago.
”The specter of communism in a country like Chile has quite an impact“Said Kenneth Bunker, founder of Tresquintos, a political analysis website, explaining Kast’s many references to the far left.
Tensions surfaced in late 2019, when the country was rocked by a wave of protests against inequality. The Government lost control of the streets and summoned the Army for the first time since the dictatorship. Meanwhile, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans has increased the slums and fueled local resentment.
Kast has reached out to foreign leaders who share his vision, meeting with advisers to President Andrzej Duda of Poland, former Deputy Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Salvini and officials from the Spanish Vox party. Two weeks ago, he visited Washington and didn’t see anyone from the Biden Administration, but he did meet with Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio.
While his collaborators think the comparisons to Trump and Bolsonaro are cartoonish, they admire some of his policies.
”We have a favorable opinion of Trump’s economic policies and Bolsonaro’s clarity to face crime“Said Rojo Edwards, a friend of Kast’s and a senator-elect from his Republican Party. Kast’s victory celebration last month featured some supporters wearing Trump caps. Kast declined to be interviewed for this article.
She recently swung to the center for votes, vowing to step up the fight against global warming, defend women’s rights and lower taxes more gradually than initially envisioned.
His friends describe Kast as very close to his nine children and two grandchildren. He met his wife, Pía Adriasola, when they were law students at the Universidad Católica de Chile in the late 1980s. In a 2017 interview, Adriasola, considered by family members to be even more conservative than her husband, said that it was not easy to build a relationship with someone so “airtight”And not very communicative like Kast. He recalled that a priest played a key role in advising them as a couple.
Kast’s stance on religious matters is actually more in tune with the growing evangelical community than with many Catholics in Chile, who have moved to more liberal stances, according to Mauricio Morales, a political scientist at the University of Talca in Chile. For this reason, within his campaign these issues have been avoided and he has focused on law and order, he said.
And about freedom. As Kast said in a recent campaign rally, “democracy and freedom is what distinguishes us from the other political project”.
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