On Friday, I mentioned that the good people of Chile would go to the polls on Sunday to vote for a new president among other things.
As I mentioned, the country's 39-year-old socialist president Gabriel Boric is not very popular, and his approval rating has been around 30% or lower throughout his entire presidency. A lot of that has to do with crime. Homicide rates doubled on his watch, and organized crime, particularly from Venezuela, exploded in Chile. Mass migration from Venezuela — and Haiti — changed entire neighborhoods in the country seemingly overnight and put pressure on infrastructure. The economy is stagnant, his administration is wrought with scandal, and his attempts at constitutional reform failed miserably.
The people are beyond done with him and his leftist ideology, and despite what the MSM headlines tell you, they proved it on Sunday.
The way the Chilean presidential elections work is that people vote in November, and the top two candidates from any party, assuming those candidates do not receive 50% of the vote, meet head-to-head for a run-off in December. This year, the left wing of Chilean politics was represented by an actual Communist, Jeannette Jara. She was Boric's Minister of Labor and Social Welfare. She won about 27% of the vote, receiving a larger percentage than any other candidate.
At first glance, it looks like she was the clear favorite and would likely win the run-off in December. But that's not the case.
On the right, you had numerous candidates hoping to reroute a country on the wrong track, which led to a split vote for most of the remaining percentage — 73%-ish. Even so, former congressman José Antonio Kast, a pro-U.S., pro-Donald Trump, tough on immigration social conservative managed to get over 25% of the vote, and he will face Jara in the run-off in December.
Unless there is some sort of major meltdown in the system, Kast will likely be Chile's next president.
Shortly after the election was called, most of the other center-right candidates threw their support behind him and asked their voters to do the same.
"Now we're heading to José Antonio Kast's campaign headquarters to congratulate him properly. What should concern us all the most is that Chile moves forward," said Evelyn Matthei, a center-right candidate who got about 13% of the vote, as she conceded.
Libertarian candidate, Johannes Kaiser, who also got around 14% of the vote immediately threw his support behind Kast as well. "We keep our word," he said, adding, that "The National Libertarian Party is a party of its word, and we're going to support [Kast's] candidacy in the second round, because the alternative is Ms. Jara."
He continued, "We will ensure that the sound doctrine of the defense of the principles of liberty is not abandoned in a possible future government. We will ensure that the rights of our fellow citizens are not used as bargaining chips by politicians."
"It will be the most important election of our generation, a true referendum between two models of society — the current one that has led Chile to destruction, stagnation, violence and hatred, and our model, which promotes freedom, hope and progress," Kast said on Sunday night.
To give you an idea of who Jara is, she once called Cuba a "democracy" and supports Cuba's Miguel Díaz-Canel, as well as Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro. Let's hope this momentum keeps up for the next month, and Chile follows in the recent footsteps of neighboring countries like Argentina, Bolivia, and the United States.
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