Chile’s Right Brawls for the Country’s Future

Latin America

Chile’s Right Brawls for the Country’s Future

Round one of the upcoming presidential election will feature one candidate from the left and four from the right.

Campaign season is well underway in the South American country of Chile, which is closing in on the first round of its presidential election in mid-November. This election is particularly unusual, with four of the five major candidates in the running coming from the Chilean right.

The past five years have been chaotic for Chile. Frustration with the high cost of living and the poor condition of public services led to a massive wave of protests and generalized social unrest in late 2019 and early 2020 and subsequently to the election of the left-wing youth movement darling Gabriel Boric, leader of the democratic socialist party Frente Amplio and the youngest ever Chilean president.

Boric came into office with a popular mandate to rewrite the Chilean constitution along broadly left-wing lines. The resulting document, a cumbersome affair that totalled nearly 400 articles, was a reductio ad absurdum of Millennial intersectionality, enshrining special privileges to every identifiable minority identity group and sporting a ludicrous Bill of Rights containing—among a very many other propositions—a “right to progressive autonomy of children and adolescents”, a “right to consumption and respect for it”, and a “right to a digital space free of violence”. The document was thoroughly rejected by the public in the constitutional referendum, 62 percent against to 38 percent in favor.

A second attempt to rewrite the constitution led to yet further confusion, when the right-wing Republican Party dominated the elections to the Constitutional Council. This draft of the constitution, which was dominated by conservative priorities, was also rejected by the public in 2023, albeit by the narrower margin of 56 percent against to 44 percent in favor.

The Chilean populace has proven unimpressed by Boric and his social democrats’ management of the country, which has been characterized by identitarian excesses and anemic economic growth. With Boric’s approval rating hovering just above 20 percent, the political momentum has moved sharply rightwards. The 2025 election appears now to be just a question of which right-wing movement will be given charge of the country.

The favorite to win both the right-wing vote and the election is José Antonio Kast, leader of Chile’s Republican Party and the boogeyman of the secular Chilean left for the past decade. Kast, of German extraction, courted controversy by publicly declaring his support for the dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose popular legacy in the country is decidedly mixed. “If he were alive, [Pinochet] would vote for me,” Kast proclaimed. 

A devout Catholic with nine children, Kast’s political approach is decidedly that of the social conservative: Opposition to abortion and gay marriage are key planks in the Chilean Republican Party’s platform. This makes him a favorite with not only fellow Catholics but also with the small but powerful bloc of Evangelical voters—a group that is only growing as a proportion of Chile’s population. Much of Kast’s stump appeal to the non-religious, though, is his strident opposition to illegal immigration and his advocacy for harsh measures against crime to secure public order.

The center-right’s postulant for the presidency is Evelyn Matthei, a fixture of Chilean right-wing politics since Chile’s return to democracy in 1989. Matthei, an economist by education, eschewes the hard social conservatism of Kast’s Republican Party and offers a vision of governance focused on economic development that appeals to the upper-middle class Chilean right. Matthei promises to overhaul the Chilean tax system and create a million new jobs, tempting voters who have shown themselves unhappy with Chile’s recent lack of economic growth. Her advocacy for same-sex marriage and legalizing abortion in cases where the health of mother is deemed at risk make her a more attractive option for Chile’s secular urban population, but she lacks the aggression, and therefore the perceived toughness, of her male competitors—a difficult situation in an election where law-and-order is a key concern for the electorate.

Academic-turned-politician Franco Parisi rounds out the already battle-tested candidates of the right. Parisi powered to third place in the 2021 election despite campaigning only virtually from the United States, a better-than-expected showing that is generally attributed to the populist appeal of his open disgust for the Chilean political class, which he denigrates as a passel of corrupt liars whose only interest is lining their own pockets. This anti-establishment rhetoric won his party a small but solid showing in legislative elections, but its ideological incoherence and lack of organization led to all six of its representatives in the chamber of deputies to resign, a performance that has probably reduced his appeal.

His policy proposals maintain a consistent focus on reducing government waste and fraud, improving the cost-of-living for Chileans, and extreme measures to crack down on illegal immigration and crime—he has even proposed placing anti-tank mines along the border to prevent criminals from bringing vehicles across illegally. Parisi considers himself a social liberal, but has little interest in the cultural issues of either the right or left.

The dark horse of Chilean politics is the magnificently-named Johannes Maximilian Kaiser Barents-von Hohenhagen—popularly known as just Johannes Kaiser—who represents the growing strain of the Chilean right influenced by neighboring Argentina’s President Javier Milei. Originally a member of Kast’s Republican Party, Kaiser left and founded the National Libertarian Party in 2024 after deciding that Kast and his followers were too enamored with state action. Kaiser combines a radically minimalist approach to government with fierce opposition to immigration both legal and illegal and a pointed cultural conservatism.

Kaiser remains an unlikely prospect for this November, generally polling around 10 percent of the vote, but the success of Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza in Argentina is a promising sign for the young libertarian’s future political career.

Standing essentially alone against the four candidates of the Chilean Right is Jeannette Jara of the Communist Party of Chile, former minister of labor under President Boric and now sole candidate for the majority of the Chilean left. Jara prevailed in a primary election held among the major left-wing Chilean political parties. Her principal appeal to the Chilean public is the institution of a universal basic income program to supplement Chile’s welfare state, along with the continuation of many of President Boric’s left-wing social programs. Polling at less than 30 percent against a deeply divided right, Jara will have a steep battle to make the second round of voting competitive.

After a promising beginning under the young and idealistic Gabriel Boric, the shine has worn off of socialism in Chile. Now the right will have its chance at the presidency.

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