Santiago (EFE).- Kast won the presidency on Sunday, defeating left-wing candidate Jeannette Jara by a wide margin, 83.4% of the votes counted.
According to preliminary data from the Electoral Service (SERVEL), the 59-year-old, ultra-Catholic, former deputy obtained 58.61% of the votes, compared to 41.39% for the 51-year-old former minister of Gabriel Boric.
Kast won in all 16 regions of the country, including left-wing strongholds such as Valparaíso and the Metropolitan Region, which houses the capital, and swept the northern mining areas and the southern agricultural regions.
“A few minutes ago, we received a call from Jara,” said Arturo Squella, Kast’s right-hand man and president of the Republican Party.
“We are very proud of our efforts and feel responsible for the tremendous task of addressing the crises Chile is facing,” Squella added.
It is the second widest victory since the return to democracy, after former progressive president Michelle Bachelet’s 24.3-point triumph over conservative Evelyn Matthei in 2013.
Kast, who campaigned in favor of General Augusto Pinochet’s (1973–1990) continuity in the 1988 plebiscite, is the first Pinochet supporter to reach La Moneda in a democratic election.
Since the return to democracy, the only other right-winger to reach power was the late former president Sebastián Piñera (2010–2014 and 2018–2022), who voted against the dictator’s permanence.
A father of nine children and a devout Catholic, Kast will receive the presidential sash on Mar. 11 from Gabriel Boric, the progressive who defeated him in the 2021 elections by a wide margin.
Since 2006, power has alternated between left and right, and no president has handed the sash to a successor of the same political alignment.
Even though Chile remains one of the safest countries on the continent, with a homicide rate of six per 100,000 inhabitants, the campaign has revolved almost monotonously around the increase in crime and irregular migration.
Kast, who has strong ties to other far-right leaders in the region, has promised to expel migrants en masse, to classify migration as a crime, and to build maximum-security prisons with total isolation for drug trafficking leaders.
The far-right leader, who managed to reach La Moneda Palace on his third attempt, will have to deal with a legislature without a majority, where the right and far-right bloc is two deputies short of a majority in Congress (76 out of 155) and tied with the left-wing in the Senate. EFE
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