Right-winger José Antonio Kast has this year’s presidential election in Chile, which will have its first round on Sunday (16), his best chance of reaching La Moneda Palace.
He already tried for the position in 2017, when he came in fourth place, and in 2021, when he received the most votes in the first round, but lost the second to the leftist Gabriel Boric.
Polls indicate that Kast is tipped to win the 2025 race in the same way he lost four years ago: although he appears in the polls as second place, behind Jeannette Jara, Boric’s candidate, projections indicate that he would beat the leftist candidate in the second round.
Graduated in law, Kast is 59 years old and, in addition to practicing law, was a university professor. He is the son of Germans who migrated to Chile after the Second World War and was accused when information emerged in the press that his father, Michael Kast, was a member of the Nazi Party.
In response, the right-wing politician said he “abhors” the Nazis and that his father fought on their side in World War II because he had to.
“When there’s a war, conscription is mandatory and a 17 or 18-year-old doesn’t have the option of saying ‘I’m not going’ because they would be court-martialed and shot the next day,” Kast said.
In politics, he was a councilor in the municipality of Buin and a national deputy for four consecutive terms (2002–2018). He was a member of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), a party he left in 2016, and was an independent candidate for president in 2017.
On the occasion, he reaffirmed his praise for the economic policy of the regime of dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), for whom his brother Michael was a minister (he was also president of the Central Bank of Chile).
“I think he [Pinochet] I would vote for me if I were alive,” said Kast, when questioning the conservative candidate Sebastián Piñera, who would win that year’s election.
“I’m quite direct. I believe that Pinochet made a qualitative leap that allowed someone like Sebastián Piñera to develop a program. Leaving aside the issue of human rights, Pinochet’s government was better for the country’s development than Sebastián Piñera’s,” he said, in reference to the conservative’s first term (2010-2014).
In 2019, Kast founded the Republican Party, a party in which he continues to this day. In addition to defending a “free economy” in Chile (his brother was one of the Chicago Boys), the right-winger intends to implement a strong repression against illegal immigration, with a proposal called Border Shield, with actions “on land, sea, air, space and in cybersecurity”.
“The Chilean State has lost control of its borders. There is no sovereignty if thousands of people enter [no Chile] without control, if organized crime crosses freely [as fronteiras] or if smuggling destroys our economy. With the Border Shield, we will regain authority, protect Chilean families and restore respect for the rule of law,” said Kast, in a statement on his official website.
Kast is a friend of the Bolsonaro family and in September, when former president Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) to 27 years and 3 months in prison on charges of attempted coup d’état after the 2022 election, he said that the Brazilian Judiciary was acting with political motivation.
“There are judges who have a very strong ideology and who let it show in decisions against the media, against digital newspapers; they clearly entered into a political dispute and feel above what the Executive Branch is,” stated the candidate.
