Chile set to elect its most right-wing president since Pinochet

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By Alexander Villegas and Lucinda Elliott

SANTIAGO, Dec 10 (Reuters) – With a commanding lead in opinion polls and an electorate clamoring for security, far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast is widely expected to win Chile’s presidential run-off on Sunday and become the country’s most conservative leader since its military dictatorship. 

Kast is running against Jeannette Jara, the governing leftist coalition’s candidate and a member of the Communist Party. A victory for Kast would mark the country’s strongest political shift in decades and add to the rising tide of right-wing governments across Latin America, as anger over reports of crime and migration has replaced demands for greater equality as the key driver for many voters.

“It would bring to power Chile’s most right-wing president since Pinochet,” said Nicholas Watson, managing director of consultancy Teneo, referring to Augusto Pinochet, the dictator who ruled the country with an iron fist from 1973 to 1990.

Kast, 59, had campaigned as a student to keep Pinochet in power during a 1988 referendum. But Watson said Kast is a democrat and less bombastic than other right-wing leaders in the region, such as Argentina’s Javier Milei or El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele.

“Kast is no Pinochet,” Watson said. “One of the big questions, should he win, is how ideologically flexible he will prove to be.”

MODERATING CONGRESS

A consistent hardliner throughout a decades-long career that began in local politics, Kast split off from the traditional conservative Independent Democratic Union Party in 2016 and later founded his current Republican Party. 

The Republicans played a prominent role during Chile’s second attempt to rewrite its constitution, which dates back to the Pinochet dictatorship, but was rejected by voters as it was seen as polarizing and more conservative than the original text.

Now Kast has pledged to deploy the military to high-crime neighborhoods, build border walls and trenches and form a specialized police force modeled on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, tasked with tracking down and deporting migrants in the country illegally, most of whom are from Venezuela, according to government data.

But while Kast’s Republican Party and other far-right parties gained clout in both houses of Congress during the November vote, the legislature is split between right- and left-wing parties and will require deal-making to pass reforms. 

The legislators that Kast needs to secure a majority are moderate, said Patricio Navia, a professor of liberal studies at New York University.

“If he starts governing from the far right, he’s going to be a minority president and won’t be able to do anything,” he said.

Outgoing President Gabriel Boric, who once pledged to turn Chile into the grave of neoliberalism, faced the same issue after his left-wing rhetoric clashed with a divided Congress, Navia said. His attempt to rewrite the constitution was also overwhelmingly rejected by voters.

Chileans will expect changes from their new president – quickly, said Marta Lagos, founder of Latinobarometro, a public opinion survey in Latin America.

“I don’t think he’ll have a honeymoon at the start. He’s someone who a week in, if he hasn’t managed to stop carjackings, shootings, all that, after a week they’ll say he hasn’t succeeded,” she said.

Investors have mostly priced in expectations of a political shift to the right, which has helped drive a year-long market rally on expectations of more market-friendly policies and regulations.

UNDECIDED VOTERS

In the first round of Chile’s presidential election on November 16, Jara and Kast each won about a quarter of the vote, with Jara narrowly ahead.

But the bulk of the other candidates were on the right, and their votes are expected to go to Kast, giving him the 50% he needs to secure the election. 

Populist outsider Franco Parisi came third with just under 20% of the vote, and he has urged his voters to vote blank. Voting on Sunday is mandatory and the latest polls show about 20% of voters are undecided, adding an air of uncertainty.

However, most analysts see the chance of Jara winning as being very slim, and think the main question is by how much Kast will win and how he will govern.

“The most important thing on Sunday isn’t going to be if Kast wins, we know that already, but what he says in his speech,” Navia said. “Will it be a sign of a unity or a sign of division?

(Reporting by Alexander Villegas and Lucinda Elliott; Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)