When on the night of this Sunday, December 14, the Chilean Electoral Service defines with the speed and efficiency that characterizes it which of the two candidates for the Presidency of Chile won – yes, a communist militant, representative of the left, and yes, leader of the extremist Republican Party, candidate of the right -, a militant of the Frente Amplio, will pick up the phone to greet the winner in a message that all Chileans will be able to see on their televisions and mobile phones. It is a tradition in Chilean politics and reaffirms, once again, an institutional path that the South American country has taken since the return to democracy in 1990, regardless of the ferocity of each campaign. It will be, incidentally, the first milestone in the farewell of Boric de La Moneda, who will leave the Presidential Palace on March 11, 2026 and, having just turned 40, will settle into a curious role as a former president while still so young.
The former president (2000-2006) used to repeat a phrase that he attributed to his Spanish friend: “Former presidents are like Chinese vases in small apartments. Everyone places great value on them, but no one knows where to put them and, secretly, a child is expected to nudge them and break them.” The role Boric assumes will be complex: he will enjoy the allowances and allowances for office and personal expenses, like his predecessors, as well as the security measures made available to him by the State of Chile, but he will hardly form a foundation to confine himself in – or sign up for an international organization.
He is also not particularly passionate about traveling (on the presidential tours he has barely seen the official buildings) or the idea of continuing to study formally (), although he is interested in reading, something he does a lot in his free time. Boric will challenge the tradition of former Chilean presidents, who settle in an important but discreet social space: he will continue to do politics, as he has done since he was a high school student in his city, Punta Arenas.
If the polls are right, if it is Kast who wins this Sunday, Boric will have a lot of work. The Chilean left and center-left will face the unavoidable moment of having to analyze their role in 21st century Chile, where their discourse does not reach the popular classes. As happens in other parts of the world, in the less well-off sectors of society people support radical right options – such as Kast, who has focused his speech on crime control, irregular migration and economic growth – and populist alternatives, such as those of Franco Parisi, who in the first round in November obtained 20%. The underlying issue is not resolved only with the alliance policy of the current ruling party that the citizens understand little or nothing (which, together with Boric’s Broad Front and the Communist Party, make up the Government), but through an in-depth debate on the project that responds to the new concerns of the citizens. In this picture, Boric will play a role, but it is not obvious when – he will probably have to remain silent for a period – or how. It will not be at least, at least at the beginning, from the front line, and perhaps it will be from below, from the territory, in a concept used by the new left-wing political generation that he leads.
Boric will call Kast and meet with him next week, if the ultraconservative wins this Sunday’s elections, as everything indicates, and it will be a hard moment for the Chilean left, almost unimaginable a few years ago. At the end of 2021, when the current president, Sebastián Piñera, called him in a very cordial message from both of them. On that occasion the scene was also surreal, because Boric and his people strongly opposed his management, especially after the social outbreak of October 2019, and even sought to overthrow him in Parliament.
But Piñera was the most moderate that the Chilean right has ever had—and probably will have—and Kast represents a different world that has not reached the Chilean Government in the last 35 years: an ultra-conservative in terms of individual freedoms, little friend of the State and officials (he wants to cut 6.5 billion dollars in the first 18 months of the Administration, although he has promised not to touch the social rights already acquired), representative of a new force, like the Republican Party, which has acquired an important weight in Parliament, but does not reach the majority together with its partners. They will have to govern, given their lack of cadres, with the other sectors of the right, especially the moderate Chile Vamos, that of the late Piñera, and this new nomenclature is still an uncertain picture. The left, given the makeup, will mainly have one space to exercise opposition: the Senate.
Part of Jara’s defeat, if it occurs, will be related to the rejection of the Boric Government. According to the Cadem survey last Sunday, 37% approve of the president’s management and 57% disapprove. It is a percentage that his predecessors would have wanted, because support has been constant in these four years, where it averages around 30%, but it is insufficient to reach a majority. Kast has classified Jara as the candidate for continuity – she was Minister of Labor and it is very difficult to detach herself from the current administration – while she tries with difficulty to convince that her proposal is different. Boric and the left, if Kast wins, will begin a long night of reflections on the role they have played from the Government and from spaces such as the constitutional convention, whose extreme proposal for a new Constitution.
The Executive will be blamed for Jara’s failure, although since 2006 no Chilean president has passed the presidential sash to another of the same sign (the oppositions always win). As the social democratic leader Carolina Tohá, Boric’s Interior Minister until last March, said in an interview with EL PAIS, it was difficult to conquer La Moneda for the period 2026-2030. But it wasn’t impossible. added Tohá, who competed in the primaries, but lost overwhelmingly to Jara.
There are those who claim that a Kast victory is personally convenient for Boric, because of the chances of conquering power again, of repeating this cycle of four years of pendulum swings between the right and the left. But, although there is an obvious political ego in Boric, which makes him – he did it especially in the first round campaign, because in the second stage he has controlled himself -, it is not clear that the triumph of the ultra was part of a plan to return in 2030. It is not ruled out that he will try again – in Chile, all the former presidents have wanted to return – especially considering his young age. The new right, however, proposes a long cycle, 8 or 12 years, and that history has not yet begun to be written.
