All the official parties in Chile line up to support the far-right Kast in the second round

All the parties of the Chilean ruling party, of the center-right, confirmed that they will support in the second round of the presidential elections, on December 19, the far-right candidate of the Republican Party, Jose Antonio Kast.

On Wednesday night it was confirmed by the last formation, the conservative National Renovation Party (RN), after the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), Political Evolution (Evópoli) and the Democratic Independent Regionalist Party (PRI) had previously done so.

The four make up the Chile Podemos Más coalition, which supports the current president, Sebastián Piñera, and whose letter to the next Presidency, Sebastián Sichel, was far from reaching the ballot last Sunday, with 12.7% support.

“We had a candidate who could not pass the fence, but we are risking the future of Chile. If the irresponsible left wins, we will have the country downhill ”, Francisco Chahuán, president of RN said shortly before the general council ratified its support for Kast.

The first to express their support, “without demands or conditions”, were the high command of the UDI, the most conservative party in the group, of which precisely Kast was a historic militant and deputy for 16 years.

The ultra-conservative, who in the first round last Sunday was the most voted candidate with 27.9% of the preferences, left the UDI to found his own formation, the Republican Party, in 2019.

In December he will fight in the second round against the leftist deputy Gabriel Boric, leader of a coalition that includes the Broad Front (FA), a progressive group with less than 5 years of experience, and the Communist Party.

From Evópoli, the most centrist formation of the ruling party, they affirmed that they will support the Kast candidacy to “vote against” the left coalition, and they discarded their participation in a possible government of closet.

For his part, Rodrigo Carimori, leader of the PRI, affirmed that his party will not become a “passive accomplice of what happens in the country” if Boric wins.

This is the first time, since the end of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1990), that the two candidates for the ballot are not part of the two large traditional coalitions, Chile Podemos Más (center-right) and Nuevo Pacto Social ( center-left).

The candidates competing on this occasion are looking for two totally opposite country models: on the one hand, Boric has a program that points to a welfare state similar to the European one, with a feminist and environmentalist accent; while Kast defends the neoliberal model installed during the dictatorship (1973-1990) with a strong anti-immigration discourse.

In this second round, to be held on December 19, both candidates will compete for the political center.

For now, Boric has obtained the support of large center-left groups such as the Socialist Party (PS), the Party for Democracy (PPD), the Progressive Party (PRO) and has received the support of former President Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) and important leaders of the Christian Democrats.