Chile, Kast is the brand new president: migrants and safety are pushing the nation to the best | EUROtoday

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The ultra-conservative José Antonio Kast gained 58% of the votes in Chile’s presidential elections and is the brand new president-elect. The communist Jeannette Jara acknowledged defeat when the Electoral Service printed the outcomes with 85% of the ballots counted, which left her caught at 42%. «Democracy has clearly expressed itself in a powerful approach. I simply spoke with the president-elect José Antonio Kast to want him success for the great of Chile”, wrote Jara on X, dispelling the few doubts that now hung over the result.

Security and migration are key issues

At the end of a long electoral campaign centered on the issues of security and migration, a drastic turn to the right took shape, bringing Chile into a scenario unseen since the return of democracy in 1990. Kast became president at the age of 59 and on his third attempt to take office in the ‘La Moneda’ building. Chilean voters, worried about the growing presence of Venezuelan gangs and the progressive increase in the murder rate, have largely rewarded his iron-fisted recipe against delinquency and illegal immigration. In the last television debate the Republican leader had promised to close the borders and had given 92 days to illegal residents to leave the country, exactly the time between the run-off and the inauguration of the presidency on March 11th.

Tensions on the border with Peru

His words immediately triggered a crisis on the northern border with Peru, where hundreds of migrants, mainly Venezuelans, had flocked seeking refuge in the neighboring country. The security ‘psychosis’ – Chile is still among the safest countries in all of Latin America – had also had an impact on the left-wing candidate’s campaign. To try to close the gap in the polls, Jara had been forced in recent weeks to harden her speech on the fight against crime, leaving promises on the acceleration of economic growth and the reduction of inequality partially aside.

After casting his vote, Kast had assured in any case on Sunday that in the event of victory he would be “the president of all Chileans no matter political variations” while Jara, in a last attempt to recover votes, had distanced himself from the outgoing president and his ally, Gabriel Boric. “I can solely reply for my work as Minister of Labor”, he said in a press point to those who asked him to take stock of the current government. “I can talk about the social security reform, the reduction of the working day to 40 hours per week, the recovery of employment with 580,000 jobs and the increase in the minimum wage,” he said.

The right turn 35 years later

Just six years after the 2019 social protests that propelled Boric to the presidency and thirty-five years after the tip of the dictatorship, Chile now sees some of the staunch defenders of army authorities return to the presidency. Kast is in reality the primary democratic president who voted in favor of Pinochet within the historic 1988 plebiscite which prevented the Chilean dictator from persevering with in energy.