Kast takes office as president in Chile; country sees most radical shift to the right since Pinochet

The president of Chile, José Antonio Kast, leaves Congress after his inauguration ceremony, in Valparaíso, Chile Diego Reyes/Reuters Far-right lawyer José Antonio Kast assumed the Presidency of Chile this Wednesday (11) and became the most radical conservative president in the country since the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. “Yes, I swear,” Kast declared in a solemn ceremony in front of the Congress plenary in the city of Valparaíso, 110 km from Santiago, in which he replaced leftist president Gabriel Boric, who had been in power for the last four years. Kast, 60 years old, becomes President of Chile with the promise of establishing an “emergency government” to deal with crime and irregular immigration, the two biggest concerns of Chileans. “Things will change,” he told reporters minutes before taking office, condemning the shooting attack on a police officer in the south of the country during the early hours of the morning. In front of a Congress with a right-wing majority, Kast was sworn in amid the applause of his allies. “Chi, chi, chi! Le, le, le! Viva Chile!”, was heard at the end of the ceremony. His first act as president was the swearing in of the 24 ministers of his cabinet. Two of them were lawyers for Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), whose dictatorship left more than 3,200 people dead and missing. He then boarded the traditional black Ford Galaxie convertible, a gift to the country in 1968 from Queen Elizabeth II of England, and greeted his supporters under the intense sun. He is scheduled to give a speech at 9 pm. – “Living in peace” – In recent years, Chileans have abandoned the desire for a new Constitution that arose with the social upheaval of 2019. Boric, who participated in the inauguration ceremony, was one of the main drivers of this process, which failed after two attempts at reform. A devout Catholic and father of nine children, Kast represents “a conservative right the likes of which have not been seen since the return to democracy” in 1990, says Rodrigo Arellano, political analyst at the Development University, a private institution. His discourse of order attracts Chileans who seek to curb crime. “My expectations are hopeful with Kast. We spent many years with a lot of vandalism and a lot of crime,” salesman José Miguel Uriona, 65, told AFP on the outskirts of Congress. For student Ingrid Pino, 38, Chile is entering “a new era, a new beginning”. She hopes that “the country will grow economically and that crime can finally end and we can live in peace.” Although homicides and kidnappings have increased and foreign gangs such as Tren de Aragua have arrived in the country, Chile is still one of the safest countries in the region. The homicide rate was 5.4 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2025, one of the lowest in Latin America. Even so, Kast gave several speeches behind armored glass during the campaign and presented Chile almost as a failed state dominated by drug trafficking. He won the presidential elections in December by a large margin against the leftist Jeannette Jara. Kast was sworn in at a ceremony attended by presidents Javier Milei (Argentina), Rodrigo Paz (Bolivia) and Daniel Noboa (Ecuador), among others, as well as Christopher Landau, United States Undersecretary of State, and Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado. Kast thus joins the right-wing governments that are growing in the region under the wing of the United States. – Expectations – “The main problems plaguing the country have no easy solution. Kast will have to find a way to prevent expectations from turning against him”, says Arellano. The new government spokeswoman, Mara Sedini, told AFP that the incoming administration’s mission is to “solve crises that are important and a priority for Chileans”, focused on recovering economic growth and “migratory security”. The new cabinet of ministers is a team “with very little experience in negotiation and political management” that “could create problems with Congress”, commented political scientist Alejandro Olivares, an analyst at the University of Chile. Journalistic investigations revealed in 2021 that Kast’s German-born father was a member of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party. Kast claims, however, that his father was conscripted into the German army during World War II and denies that he was a sympathizer of the Nazi movement. During the morning, the president made his resignation from the Republican Party official, a symbolic gesture that new presidents usually make to guarantee independence. axl/pa/gta/mar/lbc/lb/jc/aa/am

Source link