When they call him a far-right, José Antonio Kast gets upset. "They say I'm extreme, but extreme in what way? Don't treat me as far-right, because I'm not," says the 57-year-old lawyer who, just 14 months into his term, has President Gabriel Boric on the ropes .
A fervent Catholic, father of nine children and descendant of German immigrants, Kast was a member of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), heir to Pinochetism, but four years ago he broke with the party and founded his own organization, the Republican Party. And it did not go badly for him: he engulfed the traditional conservative right in the 2021 presidential elections until he escalated to the ballotage with Boric and, this last Sunday, he became the leader of the right-wing reaction to "Octoberism" and the new Constitution, which will no longer be what was thought.
When in Chile they talk about "Octobrism" they are talking about the social explosion of October 2019 that changed the political landscape of the country and brought the hard left to the Palacio de La Moneda for the first time in the current democratic era. That environment of change no longer exists, buried by another type of daily urgencies on which Kast mounted to be the one to destabilize the system this time.
"The knockout given by the young party of the most conservative right was also reflected in a great difference in voting at the national level: Republicans obtained 3,451,066 votes and the traditional right 2,053,165 votes," said "La Tercera", which he sees Kast with the looks of a president: "With great forcefulness he won the first of the three battles included in his plan to reach La Moneda in 2026. The ones that come are next year's municipal elections and the 2025 presidential one."
Perhaps the most appropriate thing is to define Kast, a man with an affable tone and polite treatment, as a very conservative and unapologetic right-winger, although those who would not support him never remember his phrases in which he assures that Pinochet would vote for him if he were alive today, in addition of proposing to dig a moat to prevent illegal immigration.
In December 2021, 40 minutes after the polling stations closed, Kast went to personally congratulate Boric on the victory. He now covets his chair in La Moneda, and the Chileans seem to have given him reason to believe that this time he will succeed.
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