The communist Jeannette Jara, former work minister of the government of Gabriel Buric, won the progressive primaries in Chile on Sunday and became the candidate on the left for the presidential elections of the late year, according to 77.5 % of the votes scrutinized.
Jara won by a wide margin of 60.5 % to the candidate of the traditional social democracy, Carolina Tohá, who was also part of the hard nucleus of Boric, leading the interior portfolio, and got 27.6 % of the votes.
In third place was the deputy Gonzalo Winter (8.9 %), of the Broad Front -the Boric party -while in fourth position was the deputy Jaime Mulet, of the Regionalist Regionalist Federation Socialist, with 2.8 %. It is the first time in Chilean history that a communist becomes the presidential candidate throughout the left.
Lawyer and Public Administrator, Jara was a Minister of Labor of Buric since the beginning of the mandate, in March 2022, until last April, when she resigned from the position to undertake the presidential career. She is the second woman in the history of the Communist Party in leading a presidential candidacy. The first, Gladys Marín in 1999.
Jara will face in the first round of November 16 a right that is favorite in all surveys and will go directly with three candidates, since they did not make primary: Evelyn Matthei, of the traditional right brought together in the Chile Vamos coalition; José Antonio Kast, of the ultra -rightist Republican Party; and Johannes Kaiser, of the National Libertarian Party.
Jara’s victory is the triumph of the toughest wing of the wide coalition with which Boric governs and a new blow to the traditional Chilean social democracy, which ruled the country for two decades after the end of the dictatorship and that has been in decline for some years now. It also represents a Batacazo for the Boric party, the Broad Front, which reached very few votes in feudos such as Santiago, Valparaíso or Punta Arenas, the hometown of the president.
A public administrator valued by his charisma
Defined by its nearby as charismatic, determined, empathetic and with great capacity for work and dialogue, the lawyer Jeannette Jara, one of the best valued ministers of the progressive cabinet led by the current president of Chile, Gabriel Buric, became this Sunday the first communist who will lead the unit candidacy of the left to the presidency of the country.
Jara, born in a working family in the El Cortijo population, in the commune of Conchalí, on April 23, 1974, in full dictatorship, swept the primaries held this Sunday, with more than 60 % of the votes, twice those obtained by its former governing partner and former minister of the interior, Carolina Tohá.
Mother of a child, lawyer, backward, teacher and head of the Public Administration career at the University of Christian Academy of Humanism, Jara is a policy with extensive experience, who already tested his qualities during the second mandate of the socialist Michelle Bachelet, when he exercised as Undersecretary of Social Security between 2016 and 2018.
His political career began, however, in the communist youths of Chile (JJCC), to which he joined in 1989, ascending until he entered the Communist Party in 1999 and soon to the central committee. During her university years she was president of the Federation of Students of the University of Santiago (Feusach), and after graduation she went to work at the Internal Revenue Service (SII), where she also served as a union leader, before being recruited by the Bachelet team.
After the arrival at the presidency of the conservative Sebastián Piñera, Jara returned to his doctoral studies, to the public administration and teaching, until in 2021 the virus of the policy again chopped and presented himself to the mayor’s office of his commune, although he failed to be chosen.
His moment would arrive a year later, when the then elected president Gabriel Buric put it at the head of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, one of the most important of his cabinet and essential for the implementation of the progressive social program with which he won the elections. A milestone, since Jara became the first militant of the Communist Party of Chile to occupy that position from the return to democracy.
During their leadership in the ministry, three of the most important laws of the Buric government were enacted: the Labor Anti -corn law (or Karin Law), the law that reduces 40 working hours to 40, and the long -awaited pension reform, in which it demonstrated that charism and negotiation capacity that both allies and adversaries recognize it.
“I come from the real Chile. I am not one of those people who were born in the elite. I come from an effort family and I know what it is to get up early to go to work and return home late waiting for the sacrifice to be worth it. I know what the salary is not reached,” he said during his campaign.
Considered more moderate and less dogmatic, Jara has taken distance from the communist leadership, especially in relation to the regimes of Venezuela and Cuba. He has cultivated the image of a close and empathic policy, which has earned him comparisons with former president Michelle Bachelet. Her management at the head of the Ministry of Labor made her known and popular among the citizens, since she depended on another of the great achievements of the Boric government, such as the increase in the minimum wage.
The left closes ranks
The three candidates who competed this Sunday in the presidential primaries of the Chilean left and the president of Chile himself, Gabriel Boric, congratulated the winner, Jeannette Jara, and confirmed their full support for the elections of next November.
The president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, congratulated his former minister of work on Sunday, Jeannette Jara, for his victory in the presidential primaries of the left, praised his winner profile “in difficult battles” and urged the candidates defeated and all the progressive parties of the country to support without fissures in the face of the November elections. In a message disseminated through social networks, the president, who is discharged from his recent paternity gave them a single recommendation after the hard fight to lead the left center: “to work” to win the presidency.
“I greet and hug Jeannette Jara because Boric
The first of the rivals to congratulate the winner was Gonzalo Winter, personal friend of Boric, who was immediately available to her rival for what she considers. “It will have all the support of the Frente Amplio party of its mayors, councilors, leaders of bases, social and this deputy, former candidate, in the role that the best may seem to his candidacy,” said the deputy.
In the same unit of unity, although visibly more affected by such a bulky defeat, which was not expected in the surveys, Toha congratulated his partner before focusing in November. “The country has known the results of primary school. For us they are sad, disappointing results, it is not what we expected. I have called a few minutes ago to Jeannette Jara, I have congratulated her for her result,” he said.
Mulet, on the other hand, could not make the expected statements before Jara’s public appearance, since his flight back to Santiago de Chile from the northern city of Copiapó, where he voted, suffered a delay.
