Who is José Antonio Kast, the new president of Chile

It was the third time: José Antonio Kast, lawyer, conservative Catholic, founder of the Republican Party and leader of the Chilean far right, who sees himself in Donald Trump, Milei and Bukele, won the presidential elections in Chile.

The right-wing candidate José Antonio Kast was elected president of Chile, after a significant victory over the communist candidate Jeannette Jara. Kast received around 60% of the vote, against 40% for Jara.

The left-wing candidate, who had received the most votes in the first round, held last month, acknowledged defeat. “Democracy spoke loud and clear. I just spoke to the elected president José Antonio Kast to wish him success, for the good of Chile”, wrote Jara on his Twitter account.

In the first presidential elections in Chile in which the voting is mandatoryKast appears to have benefited from the transfer of votes from the right-wing candidates defeated in the first round, having secured the support of the libertarian Johannes Kaiser and of Evelyn Mattheia representative of the more traditional right.

One of the great uncertainties of these elections was the fate of the votes of the more than five million Chileans who were forced to vote for the first timesays .

José Antonio Kast, lawyer, founder of the Republican Party and leader of the far right, ran for the third time to the presidency of the country, with a platform of “zero tolerance for crime”, focused on security and combating illegal immigration, in addition to cuts in public spending.

In the 2021 elections, Kast won the first round but lost the secondwith 44% of the votes, for the current president Gabriel Boricleft-wing, which obtained 56%. The first time he ran for president, in 2017, came fourth, with 8% of the votes.

Jeannette Jara, former Minister of Labor in the current government, who represented a coalition with all sectors of the left and center-leftreached the 2nd lap after winning the firstwith a message focused on increasing access to social protection programs and in measures to respond to security and immigration issues, two of the main concerns of Chileans.

Both tried to conquer the support of voters closest to the center politician, in a historic election marked by the strong antagonism between the models of society defended by each one.

Who is José Antonio Kast?

Catholic and conservative lawyer, José Antonio Kast has not yet taken office, but has already left his mark on transformation of the traditional Chilean rightwith a platform that evokes comparisons with right-wing leaders in other countries, such as Donald Trump, Javier Milei and Nayib Bukele.

Born 59 years ago in Paine, in the metropolitan region of Santiago, he is the youngest of ten children of a German couple who emigrated to Chile after the Second World War.

Your father’s pastMichael Kast, during the war, has been a source of controversy. Kast claimed that his father was forced to enlist in the German army to avoid a military tribunal and execution. “Our family history is as far from Nazism as you can imagine,” he declared during the 2021 campaign.

However, subsequent journalistic investigations indicated that Michael Kast was member of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party at age 18, according to a 1942 document from the German Federal Archives. Although there are doubts as to whether it is the same person, the place and date of birth coincide with those of Kast’s father.

Married to the lawyer María Pía Adriasolawith whom he has nine children, and close to the conservative Catholic movement, the new president of Chile rejects the label of “far right” which is often attributed to him.

Even so, defended the military regime of Augusto Pinochet, who governed Chile between 1973 and 1990, having even said that, if the former dictator were alive, I would have voted for him.

The eldest brother, Miguel Kastwas minister and president of the Central Bank during the military government, a regime that committed serious human rights violations, including torture, murders and the disappearance of thousands of people.

Kast also maintains that, unlike what happened in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, Chile experienced a “transition to democracy” under Pinochet. But, above all for the victims of the Pinochet regime, Kast’s political rise brought back ghosts of the past — which seemed to have already disappeared.

Kast’s political career began when he was a student at Catholic University, where he participated in the Gremial Movement, founded by Jaime Guzmáncollaborator of Pinochet and author of the Constitution in force since 1980, who was assassinated while he was a senator in 1991.

He was a councilor and deputy for the right-wing Independent Democratic Union party, also founded by Guzmán. He left the party, arguing that he needed abandon “political correctness”and founded the Republican Party of Chile, for which he was a candidate in the last two elections.

Despite having lost to Boric in 2021, due to social unrest in the country, and having suffered another political defeat with the rejection of the constitutional reform proposal that he defended in 2023, his victory this Sunday shows that his political movement gained strength.

“Kast tried to represent a ‘new’ rightwhat I call the populist nationalist right”, he says Robert Funkpolitical scientist at the University of Chile, in an interview with the BBC.

According to Funk, Kast “has tried, over the years, align with other models that we have seen in other parts of the world”, such as US President Donald Trump, Milei of Argentina, Bukele of El Salvador and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Before the first round, Kast stated that if the US president suggested invading Venezuela, Your answer would be: “strength”.

Kast proposes leading an “emergency government”, with measures focused on migration and public securitya topic that, according to polls, is at the top of Chileans’ concerns, despite the country’s low levels of violence compared to others in the region.

One of your promises is install fences or ditches along borders from Chile with Bolivia and Peru to prevent the entry of immigrantsjust as the US president did on the border with Mexico, and says he intends to provoke even more self-deportations of illegal immigrants than Trump.

The new president also supports the Bukele’s “heavy-handed” approachwhose mega-prison in El Salvador he visited last year to observe its operation, despite reports of human rights violations there. “We need more Bukele and less Boric”, he defended during this campaign.

On the economic front, Kast’s proposals are similar to those of Milei: he proposes a drastic fiscal adjustment of 6 billion dollars in 18 months under the slogan of “cutting political expenses”, despite doubts about its viability.

In one respect, Kast is slightly different from the politicians whose model he seems to follow: did not sow doubts about the reliability of the electoral system of the country, as Trump and Bolsonaro did, and, after the defeat in the second round of the 2021 elections, called Boric to congratulate him “for your great victory”.