The far-right candidate and leader of Chile's Republican Party, José Antonio Kast, stated on Thursday at his campaign closing that he will win the December 14 runoff and will offer the country "a change with character" to face "chaos, disorder, and insecurity." "We will go the other way, we will generate order, confidence, and security," affirmed the candidate for La Moneda who is running his third presidential race after losing in 2021 to current President Gabriel Boric in a runoff and obtaining 8% in 2017. The lawyer and former ultra-Catholic deputy harshly criticized the Government and stated that Boric's administration "had everything to do things right, it did not have a pandemic, it did not have a social outbreak, but it destroyed everything, our education and the dream of owning a home." The presidential candidate for the Republican and Social Christian Party, José Antonio Kast, speaks alongside his wife María Pía Adriasola at the closing of his campaign this Thursday, in Temuco (Chile). EFE/ Camilo Tapia. Kast says that if he wins there will be "national unity." Faced with a panorama that Kast described as a "total crisis" in the country, the far-right, descendant of a family of German entrepreneurs and one of whose members was a Nazi according to a 2021 investigation, called to "unite to face the ineptitude of the bad government." In addition to insisting on his "invitation" for irregular immigrants to leave the country, warning them that "they have 90 days" to do so - with March 11 as the deadline due to the change of presidential command - he added to his countdown: "Surrender before we are in government, because every peso we spend looking for you, you will pay in prison." Towards the end, Kast emphasized that in case of triumph over Jara, he will initiate a "government of emergency, but that ends as a government of national unity." "We are going to bet on the destiny of Chile and we have to maintain unity until after the election," he stated in a call to his sector. Father of nine children and against abortion and same-sex marriage, Kast has promised to apply a "hard but fair hand" against illegal migration and crime, in addition to an ambitious fiscal cut of 6,000 million dollars in 18 months. The Republican militant arrives at the runoff as a favorite after adding the 23.9% of the votes he obtained in the first round the support of the far-right libertarian Johannes Kaiser and the former mayor Evelyn Matthei, representative of the traditional right, who finished in fourth and fifth place with 13.9% and 12.4%, respectively. Jara, for her part, obtained the first position in the November elections with 26.9% of the preferences and defined a few hours later the challenge of the runoff as "immense." The president who comes out of the polls will have to deal from March 11 with a divided Parliament, where the right and far-right block is two deputies away from a majority in Congress and where the votes of the populist People's Party (PDG) will be key. Photo EFE. The entry Far-right Kast says he will win the runoff and will offer "a change with character" was first published in La Verdad Panamá. EFE/ Camilo Tapia. "I will leave my life for the country." In front of hundreds of people who gathered in front of the Aníbal Pinto Square of Temuco, a city 680 kilometers south of the capital that is a bastion of Chilean right-wing, Kast assured that he will "leave his life to recover peace and for young people to dream again of a prosperous Chile." The attendees, waving white and national flags, shouted in unison cheers for the candidate, as well as slogans like "no communism!", referring to the leftist and progressive candidate, Jeannette Jara, 51, a communist since she was 14 and who represents a political alliance that goes up to Christian Democracy. Kast responded: "No communism in La Moneda, with communists in Chile, but behaving well, I want to be president of all Chileans and I want to show the communists that things can be done without attacking physically or on social networks." "Millions of Chileans understood that violence leads nowhere, what will lead the country to development is well-done work," he also stated at one point in his speech. Supporters of the presidential candidate for Chile from the Republican and Social Christian Party, José Antonio Kast, attend the campaign closing this Thursday, in Temuco (Chile).
