The elected president of Chile, the far-right José Antonio Kastmade public this Tuesday the list of men and women who will be part of the Government with which it will assume power on March 11, after . The new Chilean Executive, which he has defined as an “Emergency Government”, draws a Copernican turn with respect to that of his predecessor in office, Gabriel Boric: a cabinet with little political weight, with a large presence of businessmen and technicians, mostly without party militancy or linked to the private sector, in addition to two appointments with which they reopen the wound of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
“Chile needs common sense, a sense of urgency and above all national unity,” said Kast in a speech collected by . “We are all called together for something that goes far beyond political disputes and today I present the people who, as of March 11, will assume the responsibility of leading the different ministries of the Republic,” he added. The president-elect has defended that his team “is not born from quotas, nor from calculations, nor from pressure”, but “from deep conviction and a common vocation: to always put Chile ahead.”
The presentation ceremony of the new Government of Chile was held in an event in which solemnity rules, conditioned by the official mourning that has been decreed for the wave of fires that ravage the center and south of the country, with at least 20 fatalities and more than 37,000 hectares burned. “This is not an act of celebration,” Kast stressed. “We have decided to do a sober act to also have in our thoughts, in our hearts, all those Chileans who are suffering today. It is an act of responsibility towards Chile,” said the president-elect.
The key ministers of the new Government
The first portfolio announced was Public Security, one of the axes of the new mandate. The position will be assumed Trinidad Steinertuntil now regional prosecutor of Tarapacá, known for having obtained convictions against members of the criminal organization Tren de Aragua. “This Government is going to regain control of the territory and our borders,” said Kast, who has made the fight against crime and irregular migration one of his main banners.
Treasury will fall to the economist Jorge QuirozPhD from Duke University and main advisor to the president-elect’s economic program. Quiroz has warned that the Chilean economy is going through a phase of “decline” and has defended a package of measures based on deregulation, corporate tax reduction and fiscal adjustments. Kast has promised a cut of $6 billion in 18 months without touching social benefits, one of the most debated proposals during the campaign.
The Ministry of the Interior and the head of the cabinet will remain in the hands of the former UDI deputy, Claudio Alvarado. The General Secretariat of the Presidency, in charge of relations with Parliament, will be assumed by the former senator of National Renewal José García Ruminotin a fragmented Congress without clear majorities. The Government Spokesperson will occupy it Mara Sedinialso with ministerial rank.
In Foreign Affairs, Kast has appointed Francisco Pérez Mackennaone of the country’s greatest fortunes, with no experience in the diplomatic field and who has been manager of the Luksic group for almost three decades. The ministries of Economy and Mining will be under the direction of Daniel Masvice president of the Confederation of Production and Commerce, in a country that is the world’s largest producer of copper and the second largest producer of lithium. His appointment occurs in the midst of the controversial resignation of lawyer Santiago Montt, who announced his voluntary departure as CEO of a mining company by stating that he had been invited to assume the Mining portfolio, an extreme that ultimately did not materialize.
The Justice and Human Rights and Defense portfolios will fall, respectively, to lawyers Fernando Rabat y Fernando Barros.
The shadow of Pinochet in the Kast Government
The designation of Rabat and Barros has sparked immediate criticism and has been described as a “regression” and “provocation” by experts and human rights organizations. Rabat, 53, is a specialist in civil law and is part of the law firm of Pablo Rodríguez, the late leader of Patria y Libertad, a far-right paramilitary organization that fought the Government of Salvador Allende through political violence. The future minister was part of teams that defended the dictator Augusto Pinochet in cases such as Operation Colombo or the Riggs case, regarding his hidden fortune in the United States.
“It is controversial that Rabat is Minister of Justice, considering his link with Pablo Rodríguez,” the academic from the University of Chile, Octavio Avendaño, told EFE, for whom the appointment represents “a negative, even provocative signal” from the president-elect. The political scientist from the Diego Portales University, Rodrigo Espinoza, has spoken along the same lines, warning that the designation “can become a focus of conflict, mainly with the left.”
Rabat will come to the ministry at a particularly delicate moment, with the Judiciary plunged into a crisis that has led to the dismissal of three ministers of the Supreme Court and two judges of the Court of Appeals for cases of corruption. Barros, 68, was Pinochet’s lawyer and spokesman after his arrest in London in 1998 and actively worked to achieve his release, after the former dictator was arrested at the request of the Spanish justice system on charges of torture, murder and crimes against humanity.
Human rights organizations have raised the tone of criticism. Sixteen groups of relatives of disappeared and executed political detainees signed a declaration against the designation of Rabat for constituting “a direct offense” to the memory of the victims of the dictatorship and their relatives. “It is a huge setback for the progress we have made in the area of human rights,” says the president of the Group of Relatives of Political Executed Persons, Alicia Lira. From the Group of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared of Paine, Flor Lazo has warned that if the new Government puts an end to the National Search Plan promoted by the outgoing administration “we will rebel.”
On March 11, Kast will become the first Pinochetista to come to power since the return to democracy. During his student days he campaigned on television in favor of the dictator’s continuity in the 1988 plebiscite and has defended his legacy on several occasions. His link with the regime is also family: his brother Miguel Kast was a minister during the dictatorship, president of the Central Bank and a member of the Chicago Boys. Unlike previous campaigns, the president-elect has avoided referring explicitly to the dictatorship and has not clarified whether he will pardon those convicted of crimes against humanity.
