Kast, the right-wing who vindicates Pinochet and promises a peaceful future in Chile

“I invite you to dare for a peaceful future”, proposed in his campaign for the ballot this Sunday the right-wing Jose Antonio Kast, who assures that he will restore the lost order in Chile.

An admirer of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), he is against abortion and equal marriage. Kast, 55, is a devout Catholic, married with nine children.

“They say I’m extreme, but extreme in what?” The candidate asked himself during the campaign, who rarely loses his composure and always maintains an imperturbable smile despite the criticism or attacks he receives.

In politics more than two decades ago, in this second opportunity that is presented to the presidential elections, he will contest the ballot in front of the leftist deputy, Gabriel Boric, 20 years younger than him and part of a new generation of politicians that emerged from the student protests of 2011.

In the first round, Kast obtained the first place among seven candidates, with 27.9% of the votes.

“Do not treat me as far-right because I am not. I hope they qualify me as a candidate of common sense, “said Kast, who for the second round redesigned his government program, which initially included repealing the therapeutic abortion law and expelling the headquarters of the Latin American University of Social Sciences from the country. (Flacso).

For the ballot, he assured that he will not push for the end of the abortion law, approved in 2017, or that he will close the Flacso offices, although it will end its tax exceptions. He also reversed his intention to eliminate the Ministry of Women.

However, he maintained his position of building a ditch on the northern border to prevent the passage of irregular migrants, and that of allowing people to be detained in places other than prisons during a state of emergency and extreme disorders, such as those experienced by Chile as of October 18, 2019.

Conservative family

Lawyer from the Catholic University, he has been married for 31 years to María Pía Adriasola, with whom he shares a profession. In a 2017 interview with the newspaper El Mercurio, Adriasola describes the difficulties of the first years of marriage, mainly due to her husband’s “secrecy” and the prohibition that he imposed on taking contraceptive pills.

“We had two guaguas (babies) and I wanted to stop for a while. I went to a doctor who gave me birth control pills. When I got home, I said to my husband: “Okay, this is what we have to do.” And he said to me: “Are you crazy? You can’t, ”’Adriasola said, adding that after that episode they asked for the advice of a priest and used natural methods and condoms.

Kast and his family are active members of the conservative Schoenstatt Catholic movement.

His wife composes songs of love and family bonding for him. The couple sing them along with their children, raised in the agricultural town of Paine, on the outskirts of Santiago, where Kast’s father arrived in 1950 from Germany, a country where he was a soldier in the Nazi army.

From there the candidate’s father built an empire thanks to the production of sausages and the “Bavaria” restaurant chain.

Human rights groups denounce that relatives of Kast collaborated in the arrest of opponents in Paine during the Pinochet dictatorship.

Hard wing on the right

Kast was a member of the ultra-conservative Independent Democratic Union (UDI) party for 20 years, which he left in 2016 to create the Republican Party in 2019, with even more conservative ideas.

In his first presidential campaign, in 2017, he reached fourth place, with 7.93% of the votes. Before, he was a deputy for four terms as a member of the UDI.

He has never denied his admiration for the Pinochet regime, which left more than 3,200 dead and missing in Chile. In an interview, Kast said that if the former dictator were alive – he died 15 years ago of a heart attack – and ran for election, he would vote for his candidacy.

“There is a situation that makes a difference with what happens in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. I think that Nicaragua fully reflects what did not happen in Chile “after the fall of the Pinochet regime, referring to the arrest of opponents in the recent elections in the Central American country:” That makes the fundamental difference, “Kast explained in a press conference before the first round.

From his point of view, the Constitution that was promulgated in 1980 during the Pinochet regime “contained the entire transition to democracy” and the military government handed over power after a plebiscite. “Tell me, what dictatorship has done that?”