Right Turn in Chile; Here We Go Again

Chileans have decided, again, to take a right turn.

This post was started awhile ago. The intention was to explain the first round of presidential voting in Chile, and offer my predictions for the second round, which has now also passed. Hence, Mea Culpa; yes, Daveschile is getting on in years, slowing down. Regardless, we continue.

It had been pretty clear for some time that the government of the novice president and his cohort, Gabriel Boric’s administration, had led to a majority of Chileans searching for a significant change for the next four years.  Voters in the first round of the presidential election, on November 16, 2025, had forced a runoff election between the two top vote-getters. 

The runoff  election on December 14 pit the Communist Jeanette Jara against conservative José Antonio Kast of the Republican Party. Jara had been, until recently, the Minister of Labor in Boric’s cabinet, and was seen as essentially representing a continuation of the Boric government. Although in her campaign she took credit for progressive legislation that increased the minimum wage, improved slightly the pension system, and decreased the work day, she could not distance herself far enough from having been a key participant in the ultimately unpopular Boric Government.

[A note for my friends from the ’60s who, in moments of nostalgia, continue to hum revolutionary tunes of the “New Chilean Song”, like “El Aparecido” and “Te Recuerdo Amanda“,  Jeanette is not a blood relative of singer-songwriter Victor Jara, albeit certainly an ideological communist fellow traveler.]

Kast was a deputy in Congress for several years. He was not especially active in legislative accomplishments, but rather a conservative voice resisting the most progressive attempts to broaden the role of the public sector in all aspects of Chilean society. In other words, a right wing “NO!” guy to most “progressive” legislation, especially on social issues.

Jara’s selection in a primary vote between all the candidates of the left, prior to the first round of open voting, had eliminated the most extreme left candidates. But it also eliminated the most moderate one, Carolina Tohá, of the Party for Democracy (PPD), who had the additional support of the Socialist party. She had been a strong candidate earlier in the process, but her involvement with several scandals within the government, especially a sexual abuse case featuring her deputy, weakened her in the end.

The parties on the right did not hold a primary, as did the parties on the left. So, the first-round election on November 16 served the same purpose. The more extreme right wing candidate, Johannes Kaiser, was eliminated, as was the moderate conservative Evelyn Matthei, ex mayor of Providencia Comuna in the Capital. Consequently, by the time the runoff election was held, the most extreme candidates and the most moderate ones from both sides had been eliminated. Whereas moderates on both sides saw the best election to be between Tohá and Matthei,  it was Jara and Kast who went head-to-head in the runoff election on December 14, and, as we all now know, Kast won handily.

As the election grew closer, most pollsters had been predicting that José Antonio Kast would win. So when he won, it was not a big surprise. However, the size and sources of his victory are important. Kast won by approximately 20 percentage points, with a larger total vote than in any presidential election since the return to democracy in 1990. That is in part due to the fact that in this election voting was obligatory, and there were no more than 10% null or void ballots cast.

Kast won in every official region of the country, with especially large margins in the northern-most mining regions where the immigration issues are most felt, and in the center of the country where farming and forestry are principal activities, conservative rural Chile, including the Araucania region continually convulsed by struggles for land and political participation for the indigenous population, essentially the Mapuches.

The results of this election suggest a strong move to the right, but some analysts argue that such a conclusion ignores the fact that obligatory voting forced a huge segment of new voters to vote. Faced with the threat of significant penalties for not voting, it’s not clear that the outcome represents a firm shift to the right, or simply a circumstantial outcome that reflects the main issue of the day, personal security, and the feeling that Kast was more in tune on that than Jara. 

The other important outcome of the November 16th first-round election was a realignment of political forces in the Chilean Congress. This, along with a modest paring down of the number of parties represented, implies that José Antonio Kast will have fairly strong support in Congress, but not the majority needed to push through his programs with ease. He will have to make compromises to include some or all of the other center-right parties in his government (UDI, Renovacion Nacional, Evopoly or the Democratas). He will have to rely on support from the two Democratas in the Senate and 14 Deputies of the Partido de la Gente (PDG), to align with his representatives to pass legislation in Congress.

Whereas in the past the Christian Democrat party (PDC) often served as the “hinge” between left and right forces in Congress, the party over the years has lost membership and influence as its leadership takes the party more and more to the left. It now appears that this role will fall to the PDG, and its enigmatic leader Franco Parisi. Parisi received a surprising 19% of the votes for president in the first round. He is joined in the PDG by the mercurial Deputy Pamela Giles who, in her victory speech, declared that if she became president of the Chamber of Deputies (which has now happened), she plans to “… make life miserable for the next President of Chile”. The relationship between the new government and the PDG will be a struggle.

Parisi’s impressive vote total was a surprise to most everyone, except to him and his close aides. They confirmed that going in to the first round, they even felt they would make it to the runoff stage. Parisi has been running for President of Chile for several years, while living in the United States to avoid paying a large sum owed to his estranged wife. When it became clearer that he might be in serious contention this time, and that he would have members of his party winning seats in Congress, he paid up, thus avoiding a jail term, returned to Chile, and ran his impressive campaign on his home turf. Chilean folklore continues to be created on a regular basis.

When Kast becomes President on March 11, he will face an impatient populace, with fragile congressional support. On election day, citizens were clearly focusing on the issues for which Kast gets highest opinion poll support:  tightening a porous immigration system, reversing what they perceive as worsening personal security, and providing a boost to the decade-long unremarkable economy.

Kast has projected a Trump-like approach to border protection and undocumented immigrants already in the country. Since 2015, immigrant population in Chile has risen from around 500,000 to more than 2 million, and with it a significant requirement for health care, education opportunities for children, and housing. The housing deficit in the country is now reported to be much greater than the officially announced 550,000 units. While you can question the commonly heard accusation that “the immigrants brought an increase of crime with them”,  you cannot ignore the fact that the huge increase in immigration (especially recently from Venezuela) has put a costly burden on Chile’s social services programs.

It will be interesting to watch how the new Kast government interacts with the new US ambassador to Chile, Brandon Judd. Judd comes to his diplomatic post from a long leadership role in the US Border Patrol along the US-Mexico border. The new ambassador has stated publically that he is anxious to “assist” the new Chilean administration deal with its urgent and complex immigration issues. Judd, by the way, was a Mormon missionary in Chile in the 1990s, which means he probably speaks Spanish with a clearly identifiable Chilean accent.

There is now a hiatus until March 11, when the new government is installed. Chileans return from their traditionally long summer vacations in late February, when families will be faced with purchasing everything needed to send their children back to school. They will surely feel the reality of higher prices of everything, caused by persistent inflation and the effects of several years of stagnant wages. Their focus will expand to the cost and availability of health care, child care, and for those waiting for affordable housing, a long, discouraging wait while costs of credit and prices rise.

The Boric crowd will soon to be out of power, back on the street, from where they came. It’s worth recalling that the Boric government arose out of the estallido social, the sometimes peaceful, other times violent, civic protests in 2019-20 which were meant to express dissatisfaction with many aspects of life in Chile, but ended up trying to unseat then-president Piñera, and creating considerable destruction in Santiago and other urban centers throughout the country. In a way, it’s ironic that Boric and his team, acting as instigators or at least supporters of the uprising, then once elected, were obliged to set the country again on the road to stability and development; in other words, clean up their own mess.

It is interesting to note that neither Kast with his Republican party, nor Jara with her Communist party, signed the “Acuerdo por la Paz y la Nueva Constitucion“, the agreement signed in November of 2019, which led to a calming of the political waters post-estallido, and launched the year-and-a-half failed attempt to write a new constitution. Gabriel Boric did, in fact, sign that agreement, earning much criticism from his Frente Amplio colleagues, but projecting himself enough to the center to at least appear to have moderated his prior more extreme views. Hence, he was subsequently elected President, defeating the now resurgent Jose Antonio Kast.

Once in the presidency, Boric had bet on the approval of a very progressive and refoundational constitutional rewrite upon which to base his program which, in his own words, would bury the neoliberal system in Chile. When Chileans thrashed that proposal in a plebiscite, Boric’s government lost steam. However, as he reaches the end of his term, he can claim to have stabilized the economy, bringing inflation to a respectable level. [* see note below] He also tauts the new lithium strategy his government implemented which will result in a duplication of the production of lithium, a significant change in the form of lithium extraction to make it more environmentally acceptable and more efficient. This strategy, he claims, should make CODELCO, the state copper producer, a world leader not only in copper but also lithium. At best, the new strategy makes the Chilean State half owner of some existing, and all new, lithium mines. This re-nationalization, coupled with new royalty arrangements with mining operations, means a healthy future for Chile’s national budget. This, as long as the price of copper stays high and lithium prices regain earlier highs.

[* Note: An earlier version of this post suggested that Boric had lowered the debt. That is not the case. The only two presidentes that lowered the external debt, since the recovery of democracy after the Pinochet dictatorship, were Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle. After them, Ricardo Lagos, two governments of Michelle Bachelet and two of Sebastian Piñera, raised the debt. Actually, Boric ended up raising the external debt to the highest level since the Pinochet government. End note.]

Looking ahead, there is a fairly strong feeling that Chile is poised to return to a more stable, growth economy. With the election of Kast, and his promise to reduce onerous bureaucratic and environmental restrictions, the private sector seems ready to make significant investments in mining, energy and, hopefully, the housing sector. There are several mega-infrastructure projects that should attract needed investments to bring to fruition, worth noting here.

The Providencia to Huechuraba cable car is 60% finished. In 2017, it should be carrying passangers over the San Cristobal hills, reducing significantly the time workers, students, and the general public now spend in buses between these busy areas of the capital city.

The approximately three kilometer suspension bridge being built across the Chacao Straits linking the mainland near Puerto Montt to the Grand Island of Chiloé should be operational in 2028. This is a bitter-sweet bridge. Sweet because it will provide a rapid, smooth trip to this Island that for decades has suffered the negative economic and social effects of being cut off from the rest of the country, the only access by ferryboat or more recently, planes. Bitter, because the ferry crossing has been, for those same decades, an exciting trip from one part of Chile to another, a transit that forced you to exit your vehicle, feel the salty air, and observe the ever present sea birds and mammals;  for many, the new crossing will lose at least some emotional value.

For decades governments have announced plans for a fast train between Santiago and Valparaiso. It seems there may finally be progress in this regard. Way back, Chileans tell me, there was a train from Santiago to Viña del mar. But for the half century I have known Chile, the masses of business people, tourists, and legislators going to and from the Congress in Valparaiso have taken buses or cars. A fast train makes so much sense, it’s hard to believe it is still only a “plan”.

The agreement with Google to lay an internet cable between Valparaiso and Sydney, while not yet finalized, should be signed soon. This project is huge for connectivity between countries truly at the end of the world.

Around the time that many of the readers of this blog and I were in Chile serving in the Peace Corps, the construction of the underground rapid-transit system for the metropolitan Santiago area was begun. To date, there are seven active lines covering the Santiago Metropoitan area, extending almost 100 miles. The system is efficient, clean, and one of the most modern in Latin America. 2.5 million passangers travel on the Metro daily. Three new Metro lines, #7, 8, & 9, are being built, as well as extensive modernization of the older lines.

The Kast administration will accomplish very little if they can not pull together a coalition of conservative parties which, together, won the election. The early conformation of a cabinet representing the array of parties, including those of the more moderate center, will be an indiction of how well the Kast coalition is coming together. The big elephant in the room, both for forming this coalition and governing over the next four years, is the role of Johannes Kaiser’s National Libertarian party. One would think that having won the election together, these parties would coalesce to deliver a successful conservative government, beyond what the Piñera government was able to accomplish. But “red lines”, especially on social issues, presented by the Kaiser faction, are suggesting this coalition will be difficult not only to form now, but also govern successfully.

While the winning coalition is struggling to form itself, the losing side, the parties on the left, are engaged in an iternacine battle to avoid the blame for having turned the government over to the conservatives in the last election. It remains to be seen if Boric’s significant move to the center will last, or will he and his cohort revert to their “octubrismo” desire for the extreme institutional reforms reflected in the “estallido” and the first constitutional convention.

Chile seems headed in a positive direction, with potential economic growth and more institutional stability. What lurks overhead, however, is the insane (my word) global disruption being perpetuated by the US president. A relatively small country like Chile depends upon multinational norms, rules, and institutions not only to prosper, but ultimately to survive. Trade with both the US and China is key to Chiles’s productive and commercial sectors. If that balance is disturbed further, no internal adjustment will suffice to protect the country’s slow progress towards a more just and equitable economy.

But, let’s first see what happens between now and March 11, when José Antonio Kast becomes Chile’s 38th president.

With guarded optimism, Viva Chile!!

 

Posted on January 17, 2026, in Santiago, Chile.