The far-right won a majority in the Chilean Parliament on Monday, November 17, further strengthening the position of the right-wing candidate, José Antonio Kast, before the second round of the presidential election, and putting his left-wing rival, Jeannette Jara, a little more on the defensive. Held simultaneously with the presidential election, during these legislative elections, the right-wing group gained 76 of 155 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, compared to 64 seats for the left wing, and 25 seats to 23 seats in the Senate.
mI Jara, 51, ranked first in Sunday’s primary, narrowly ahead of ultra-conservative Republicans, who rank on the far right. However, he scored lower than expected, receiving 26.85% of the vote versus 23.92% for Mr. Kast, according to results that included 99.99% of the vote. At less than 30%, the total vote tallied by the left-wing candidate was the lowest since the return of democracy after Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973-1990).
José Antonio Kast, a 59-year-old lawyer, is the clear winner of the second round scheduled for December 14. This was supported by a radical security program that provided for the mass expulsion of irregular migrants and the construction of high-security prisons. If he wins, he would be Chile’s first right-wing leader since Pinochet.
A duel against the backdrop of security and inequality
“I find him authoritarian, he looks down on people who think differently from him”the candidate from the social democratic wing of the Communist Party said in a meeting with residents of the disadvantaged neighborhood of La Pintana, south of Santiago. The former Minister of Labor, who notably reduced working hours and launched reforms to the private pension system, also accused Kast of not adopting the policy. “no law will make Chile progress” when the latter sat in Parliament.
Promising “equal pay for equal work” if she is elected in December, Jeannette Jara seeks to mobilize female voters who have contributed to the victory of outgoing president Gabriel Boric against José Antonio Kast in 2021.
Mr. Kast, for his part, emphasized the security, launch theme “No one is safe in Chile”Monday, to his supporters in the Araucania region, while the presidential campaign has been dominated by an increase in crime caused by the arrival of foreign gangs from Venezuela, Peru and other Latin American countries.
If MI While Jara has pledged to strengthen the police presence in the country and increase banking secrecy to tackle organized crime funding, his rivals have pledged to expel hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants and build walls, fences and moats along the border with Bolivia.
This is a “a historic and unprecedented shift of the electorate towards the extreme right” according to Guillaume Long, an expert at the Center for American Economic Policy and Research, he describes it as “very worrying in a country that remembers dictatorships and human rights violations”.
