Chile’s far-right Kast wins landslide election against communist opponent

Chile elected its most right-wing president in 35 years of democracy on Sunday, with arch-conservative Jose Antonio Kast scoring a thumping victory over his leftist runoff rival.

Kast won some 58 percent of the vote and held an unassailable lead over Jeannette Jara, a communist who headed a broad leftist coalition.

Kast campaigned on a promise to expel more than 300,000 immigrants, seal the northern border, take a “firm hand” on near-record crime rates and restart the stalled economy.

“Chile wanted change,” he told thousands of elated supporters Sunday evening, vowing to “restore respect for the law,” while pledging to govern for all Chileans and to listen to critics.

Once one of the Americas’ safest countries, Chile was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, violent social protests and an influx of foreign organized crime groups.

It is the latest victory for Latin America’s right, after winning elections in Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, El Salvador and Ecuador. Quickly after the polls closed and the scale of the victory became clear, Jara called Kast to concede, saying voters had spoken “loud and clear.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Argentina’s Javier Milei were among those who sent their congratulations.

Retiree Gina Mello hoped Kast would “deploy the military” to the streets from day one, “lock up all the drug traffickers and deport anyone who came here to commit crimes.”

In Santiago, Kast supporters beeped car horns, waved flags and cheered a man who has repeatedly defended the bloody dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet left power in 1990, after Chileans rejected a bid to extend his 17-year rule via referendum. At the time Kast campaigned for Pinochet.

Supporters sang the national anthem, chanted “Pinochet! Pinochet!” and clasped portraits of the late autocrat. Another Kast voter came dressed as US President Donald Trump.

Police said they detained one person in a small anti-Kast demonstration in the capital.

Kast’s family background has also raised questions. Media investigations have revealed his German-born father was a member of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party and a soldier during World War II. Kast insists his father was a forced conscript and did not support the Nazis.

Jara’s stint as labor minister under outgoing leftist President Gabriel Boric proved to be a key weakness. Boric’s term was crippled by repeated failed attempts to reform the Pinochet-era constitution.

Boric had been critical of what he has called Israel’s “disproportionate” response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack. Just weeks after the massacre, he recalled Chile’s ambassador to Israel to protest Israel’s “unacceptable violations of international humanitarian law” in Gaza.

Chile, which has the largest Palestinian population outside the Arab world, joined calls in January for an investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes in the Israel-Hamas war.

In May, Jara suggested in a radio interview that she would go further and suspend Chilean-Israeli relations.

Kast is to the right of most Chileans on many social issues, including abortion, which he opposes even in cases of rape.

But many Chileans fed up with high crime and slow growth during four years of leftist rule said they would vote for change, despite misgivings.

Polls showed more than 60% of Chileans thought security is the top issue facing the country.

And while statistics show that violent crime — fueled by Venezuelan, Peruvian, Colombian and Ecuadoran gangs — has risen in the last 10 years, fears about crime have risen even faster.

Richard Kouyoumdjian, a security expert and former naval officer, said Kast would have to quickly develop a strategy to secure the border, strengthen the police, bring immigration under control and end an Indigenous insurgency in the south.

“On security it’s very basic what he’s said,” Kouyoumdjian told AFP. “It’s policy in 200 characters on Facebook or Twitter.”

Kast’s hardline positions have raised fears that he will try to rewrite the history of Pinochet’s dictatorship, which tortured and imprisoned tens of thousands of people.

“I’m fearful because I think we are going to have a lot of repression,” said 71-year-old retiree Cecilia Mora.

“I see him as a Pinochet out of uniform,” she said.

Since 2010, Chileans have alternated between left- and right-wing governments at every presidential election.

Kast will take office in March.