SANTIAGO, Chile — This Sunday, Chileans head to the polls in a general election to vote for a new president, Senate and Congress.
But four years after voting for leftwing former student leader Gabriel Boric to become the country’s youngest ever president with a mandate to expand the welfare state in Chile, this race looks radically different.
Security, immigration and unemployment are top of the agenda for voters.
Three right-wing candidates are vying to join Communist Party politician Jeannette Jara, 51, the current frontrunner according to polls, in a likely runoff election to be held next month.
Jara, who served as labour minister in Boric’s government and is a former student and union leader, is promising to gradually introduce a minimum income of $780 per month, as well as cash transfers to workers, and subsidies for small businesses.
She closed her campaign on Wednesday evening in an open square in a southern district of the capital, Santiago, where supermarket cashier Rosa Rivera watched Jara deliver her closing remarks alongside her husband from the back of the crowd.
“She doesn’t promise things she can’t achieve, which I think is a very responsible approach,” she said. “I believe she would be a good president for Chile.”
In the evening sunshine across town, 20-year-old medical student Alanis Ramírez explained why her vote was going to far-right Catholic father of nine José Antonio Kast, before ducking into a cavernous concert venue to hear her candidate speak one final time before Sunday’s vote.
“He knows what our country needs, and he has the experience to deliver it,” she said. “Chile needs an iron fist, because criminals have it too easy – I can’t even go out in the street in my neighbourhood anymore because it’s too dangerous.”
Inside the building, music blared and a handful of young people jumped up and down excitedly at the request of a DJ playing reggaeton, while lights strafed the crowd as it built up.
When Kast finally spoke to the packed arena, his plans to tackle illegal migration, delivered to a backdrop of red, white and blue, the colours of Chile’s flag, provided a spectacle with a distinctly Trumpian ring.
Kast’s hardline security and immigration policies have seen him praise El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who has cracked down on gang violence in the Central American nation, and paint his potential administration as an “emergency” government. He is proposing to criminalize irregular migration, dig border ditches and build walls, and construct new high-security jails.
President Boric has been lambasted by Chile’s right wing, who blame his administration for disregarding security, which is perceived to have skyrocketed under his leadership.
In October, 63% of Chilean respondents to an Ipsos survey said that their most pressing concern was crime – more even than respondents in Mexico or Colombia.
But while homicides have dropped and Chile remains one of the safest countries in Latin America, violent crime rates have spiked for some specific offences such as kidnappings.
Outflanking Kast even further to the right is 49-year-old YouTuber-turned libertarian congressman, Johannes Kaiser, who is running for the presidency for the first time.
At his own campaign closing event on Wednesday, a baying crowd was whipped up by Kaiser’s vitriolic anti-communism and attacks on progressive values. In the crowd, some souvenir sellers sold pin badges with anti-communist messages and even mock ID cards with dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s image.
He has said that if elected, he would close the border with Bolivia to halt illegal migration, reduce the number of ministries from 25 to nine, deport undocumented migrants and their children, and withdraw Chile from international climate treaties and the regional human rights court.
In 2021 as a congressman-elect, Kaiser questioned whether women should have the right to vote, and has consistently attacked what he refers to as “gender ideology.”
A fourth rightwing candidate, Evelyn Matthei, a long-term fixture on the traditional right wing of Chilean politics, has fallen precipitously in the polls as a more moderate alternative for the presidency.
Matthei, like Kast and Kaiser, is of German descent. She even thanked Kaiser in German at the final televised debate a week before the election.
Voting is mandatory in this election, meaning turnout will be significantly higher than in 2021.
If no presidential candidate secures an absolute majority on Sunday, as is expected, the two leading contenders will head to a runoff on Dec. 14th.
The new president will take office on March 11.
Transcript:
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
On Sunday, Chileans will cast their ballots in the first round of a general election for president and Congress. It’s a campaign that highlights the country’s deep political polarization, and the alternatives in the presidential race could hardly be starker, as John Bartlett reports from the capital, Santiago.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD #1: (Chanting in non-English language).
JOHN BARTLETT: In Chile right now, it feels like you can’t turn a corner without running into a rally or campaign event.
(CHEERING)
BARTLETT: Eight presidential candidates, ranging from the far left to far right, are vying to lead Chile into a new era.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: Four years after winning on a social justice agenda, President Gabriel Boric is leaving office. But now, public security has become the focus of the campaigns. Leading the polls in this first round of voting is Jeannette Jara, a Communist Party politician and former Boric minister.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JEANNETTE JARA: Viva Chile.
(CHEERING)
BARTLETT: Her program promises a minimum income of around $780 per month, cash transfers to workers and subsidies for small businesses.
FLORENCIA VARAS: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: “I feel like Jara is the candidate who is closest to the reality in Chile,” Florencia Varas, a 23-year-old theater student, told me in the square in Maipu, a southern Santiago district.
VARAS: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: “Obviously, security is important, but I don’t think everything they’re saying is real. Chile is not a dangerous place.”
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
(CHEERING)
BARTLETT: But not everyone sees it that way. On the right, concerns over crime and migration are driving a surge that could shape December’s runoff, with many voters likely uniting behind ultra-conservative Jose Antonio Kast.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BARTLETT: Kast, the Catholic father of nine, was roundly defeated by Boric in 2021’s presidential election.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOSE ANTONIO KAST: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: At his campaign’s closing rally in a cavernous concert venue in Santiago, thousands wave red, white and blue Chilean flags, and music blared as Kast outlined his plans for building hundreds of miles of border walls – a spectacle that had a distinctly Trumpean (ph) ring.
ROBERTO WEBER: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: Roberto Weber helped cofound Kast’s Republican Party in 2017. He believes Chile’s economy, security and health care can only be saved by Kast.
(SOUNDBITE OF HORN HONKING)
BARTLETT: The greatest challenge to Kast is coming from even further to the right. Johannes Kaiser, a radical libertarian YouTuber known for mocking the victims of Chile’s dictatorship and questioning women’s right to vote, has gained a following that could shape the final round of the campaign in December.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: At Kaiser’s closing rally, supporters wrapped in Chile flags sported Make Chile Great Again caps…
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOHANNES KAISER: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: …And others wore vicious anti-communist slogans on T-shirts and pins, while vendors sold mock ID cards featuring the image of Chile’s former dictator, General Augusto Pinochet.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: One tattooed 26-year-old student, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution from the left, proudly explained that her anti-communist T-shirt, printed with the date of General Pinochet’s coup d’etat, was a celebration of the freedom that his 17-year dictatorship brought Chile.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: As the national anthem struck up behind us, she explained that she finds Kaiser the most sensible and straight talking of the candidates.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD #2: (Singing in Spanish).
BARTLETT: If no candidate secures more than 50% of the vote to win outright on Sunday, as is expected, a runoff will be held on the 14 of December, and the most likely outcome is that Chileans will be left with a stark choice between the Communist Party’s Jara and one of her two far-right rivals. Whatever the result on Sunday, a choice between two drastically different visions for the future will face Chileans in the second round.
For NPR News, I’m John Bartlett in Santiago, Chile.
