Chile Elections 2021: Who is José Antonio Kast, the favorite defender of the Pinochet era of the Chilean right?

With a harsh speech against immigration, gay marriage or feminism and a position complacent with the dictatorship, Jose Antonio Kast It is the most conservative card in the race to La Moneda and its explosive rise in recent weeks has caused a tsunami on the Chilean right.

Although he likes to sell himself as an “outsider”, closet He is an old acquaintance in politics: he was a deputy for 16 years, a militant for two decades in the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) and an independent candidate in the last presidential elections, where he barely reached 8% of the votes.

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“A new cycle in politics has to begin, where political correctness is put aside”, he said when in 2016 he left the UDI, one of the right-wing parties that make up the ruling coalition.

With him, he dragged heavyweights from the training and founded in 2019 the Republican Party, with whom he attends these elections, which are the most uncertain and transcendental in the recent history of Chile.

TRUMP AND BOLSONARO FAN

Despite his long political career, he had never gone this far before: most polls place him as one of the two favorites on November 21 to go to the second round, with more than 20% in voting intention, along with the leftist. Gabriel Boric.

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He left as a residual candidate, but as the weeks went by he was gaining strength and taking part of the support of the ruling party and former minister Sebastian Sichel, who has been deflating after a series of mistakes in the campaign.

José Antonio Kast upon his arrival at the last televised debate of the presidential campaign. (EFE / Alberto Valdés).

Several figures of the classical right have publicly shown their support, because they consider that closet (55 years old) is the only one who can “straighten out” a country that is still recovering from the serious protests of 2019 – he calls the protesters “violent” – and from a pandemic that has wreaked social and economic havoc.

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He does not want to be labeled the extreme right – he claims to be “the candidate of common sense”-, but on more than one occasion has shown his admiration for the American Donald Trump or the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro, although he is less quirky than them and tries to appear friendly and polite.

Some of his campaign phrases, such as “Dare to make Chile a great country”, inevitably recall the “Make America great again” that led to Trump to the White House.

He is also very close to the Spanish VOX party and on Sunday he celebrated the irruption in the Argentine Parliament of the far-right Javier Milei.

Chilean presidential candidate José Antonio Kast of the Republican Party poses for a selfie during his campaign closing rally in Valdivia. (JAVIER TORRES / AFP).

PINOCHETIST?

A lawyer, of German descent and deeply Catholic (he is the father of nine children), he tried to moderate his speech during the campaign, but his strategy was blown up last week at a press conference with foreign correspondents with statements that woke up a string of criticism and still take their toll.

closet wanted to differentiate the regime of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) -which he refers to as the “military government” – from the “dictatorships” of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela because, in his opinion, the transition in Chile took place after “elections” democratic “, in which” the opponents were not locked up. “

“There is no point of comparison with what happens in the dictatorships of Cuba, where they have been under dictatorship for more than 70 years, neither with the narco-dictatorship of Venezuela and nor with the dictatorship of (Daniel) Ortega in Nicaragua”, express.

Tell me if dictatorships hand over power to democracy and if they make a transition to democracy and it is respected. That is what other countries do not do and in Chile it was done ”, he insisted.

José Antonio Kast holds a Cuban flag before a televised debate on TVN in Santiago, on November 15, 2021. (ESTEBAN FELIX / POOL / AFP).

His complacency with the military dictatorship is not new. In fact, he supported the continuation of the general in the 1988 plebiscite and often repeats that he would vote for him if he were alive.

He defends his economic legacy and one of his many brothers was also a minister of the regime.

His program has not been without controversy either. In the economic sphere, he defends liberal positions that go through the deregulation of the markets, the reduction to the minimum of the State, the privatization of the large mining company Codelco and the drastic reduction of taxes.

While in the social sphere, he wants to eliminate the Ministry of Women, enshrine the concept of the traditional family, fight against abortion and build a “ditch” in the north to stop illegal migration, in the purest Trump style.

He opposed the constitutional change in the historic plebiscite of 2020 and many analysts have warned that, if he reaches the Presidency, he could boycott the work of the convention in charge of drafting the new text.

JAK, as his followers call him, wanted to scare away fears in his meeting with the international press: “I am a democratic person,” he said, in case there was any doubt.

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