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Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Chile's Right Has Pole Position in the Race to Replace Boric
Six months out from Chile's presidential election scheduled for Nov. 16, the field is crowded. But one thing seems likely: The nation of 20 million will pivot sharply to the right, after six years in which the progressive idealism represented by President Gabriel Boric and his leftist Broad Front, or FA, party has held sway. Leading the pack to replace Boric, who rode the progressive wave to power in 2022 but can't run for re-election due to a constitutional bar on consecutive terms, are three figures from the traditional and radical right. According to a May 16 survey by polling firm Cadem, 17 percent of voters would like to see Evelyn Matthei of the Independent Democratic Union, or UDI, become Chile's next leader, down from a recent high of 26 percent in December. A 71-year-old economist who until recently served as district mayor of Providencia in the heart of Santiago, the capital, Matthei has traditionally cut a technocratic, moderate figure. Matthei's father was a top general during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and she herself campaigned in support of Pinochet remaining in power in the 1990 referendum that ended his 17-year rule, while also backing efforts for him to avoid prosecution for the crimes committed in that time. But she is supportive of gay marriage and abortion, and as a presidential candidate in 2013 compared her policies to those of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In December, Matthei called for 'less ideology, more pragmatism' in Chilean politics, and has promised to cut government waste and corporate taxes in order to restore annual GDP growth to 4 percent, a rate it last averaged between 1991 and 2005. Yet with half of those surveyed by Cadem saying crime is the main reason holding back growth, ultraconservatives have sought to outflank Matthei's center-right Chile Vamos coalition on public safety and illegal immigration. In response, Matthei has taken to filming campaign spots in the Atacama, the arid northern region through which most migrants cross, while announcing a plan to deploy soldiers and drones to the border, repatriate both illegal migrants and 3,000 convicted foreign nationals, and construct a maximum-security jail in the middle of the desert. To get more in-depth news and expert analysis on global affairs from WPR, sign up for our free Daily Review newsletter. 'I'm not going to allow us to lose Chile,' she said in unveiling the plan last month. 'We're going to be very tough, very drastic, very radical.' She has also indicated that she would consider following the lead of U.S. President Donald Trump by sending convicts from organized crime groups like Venezuela's Tren de Aragua to be imprisoned in El Salvador. And in March, following a high-profile double murder, she suggested that the death penalty, which has been outlawed in Chile since 2001, 'should be applied in some cases.' However, Matthei's hardened tone may not be enough to stop the return of Jose Antonio Kast, the 59-year-old far-right leader who lost to Boric in the 2021 presidential contest. In last week's poll, Kast finished with 17 percent support, up from 8 percent in February. A long-serving UDI congressman for the south side of Santiago, Kast is the son of a Nazi emigre to Chile, and his late brother served as a minister under Pinochet, whose regime Kast has also defended. He even went so far as to say that if the dictator were still alive, he would vote for him. After leaving Congress in 2018, Kast broke with the UDI and founded his populist Republican Party the following year. He has styled himself after former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and made law and order the central component of his three presidential runs to date. But unlike Matthei, Kast combines this with a strident defense of 'family values' and an anti-system message. 'Chile is on the edge of the abyss,' he told supporters in January, blaming 'a political class that has systematically failed to protect Chileans,' while implying that Matthei belonged to 'the same old crowd.' Responding to the latest polling, Kast says he sees a 'growing possibility' of a first-round victory in November. That seems unlikely because the conservative vote will be split, and not only between him and Matthei. Axel Kaiser, a 49-year-old outsider congressman who came to prominence on YouTube condemning Boric's first ill-fated effort to rewrite Chile's Pinochet-era constitution in 2022, is also in the running. Kaiser, who left Kast's movement to found his own National Libertarian Party in 2024, also demands mass deportations of migrants. Modeling himself after the inflammatory style of Argentine President Javier Milei, he lambasts the political 'caste,' has said he would shut down public hospitals if elected and has also questioned whether women securing the right to vote 'was a good idea.' Support for Kaiser has slipped in recent weeks, from a high of 15 percent in April to just 6 percent in May, with Kast seemingly eating into his and Matthei's vote. The three will not hold an opposition primary to present a unified candidate, instead opting to test their strength on polling day in November. In the likely event of no candidate winning more than 50 percent of the vote, the second- and third-placed figures on the right are likely to fall in behind either Kast—as in 2021, when he lost to Boric—or Matthei, positioning them for a second-round victory on Dec. 14. Chile's left, by contrast, will hold a primary open to all voters on June 29 to decide who will take up the standard from Boric. The sitting president has notched up a series of incremental social reforms: raising the minimum wage, increasing pension payouts, capping the working week at 40 hours, reviving parts of Chile's passenger rail network and passing legislation to tackle sexual harassment and support people with autism. But these have been overshadowed by the failure of the constitutional reform process he championed and high levels of violent crime, as well as a handful of damaging blunders. These include Boric's delay in removing a trusted Interior Ministry official accused of sexual abuse and a rolling, multimillion-dollar cronyism and campaign-finance scandal involving NGOs with close ties to his administration. Fresh revelations involving the latter saw the president's disapproval rating spike to 70 percent in May, a peak registered only twice before since he took office in March 2022. As a result, the left seems demoralized and disorganized. Its best-placed candidate is Carolina Toha, a 60-year-old who recently stepped down as Boric's interior minister to run for the presidency. A political scientist, former congresswoman, ex-mayor of Santiago and senior figure in the center-left administration of former President Michelle Bachelet from 2009 to 2012, Toha is seen as a steady and pragmatic hand. Addressing her fellow members of the Party for Democracy, or PPD, in April, she spoke of the need to build a 'modern, efficient' and pro-growth progressive movement, and to fight the 'planetary phenomenon' of anti-democratic, authoritarian populism, which she said 'has its imitators in Chile.' But just 10 percent of those polled last week say they will vote for Toha, suggesting she is tarnished by her association with Boric. The same is likely true of Congressman Gonzalo Winter, a former student leader and the reluctant presidential candidate for the Broad Front, who took just 6 percent. Jeannette Jara of the Communist Party, who served as Boric's labor minister, notched 5 percent. Two prominent progressives who may have gained more traction—Bachelet, 73, and the Communist Party's Camila Vallejo, 37—have ruled out running. With little enthusiasm to carry on Boric's project even among its leading lights, the momentum is clearly with Chile's insurgent conservative forces. Matthei and Kast also have the backing of the country's corporate press and most of the private sector, and seem buoyed by a regional rightward wave that seems likely to break over Peru, Brazil and Colombia in 2026. Yet centrist and left-wing sympathies may coalesce around the figure of Toha once the primary, with its state funding and TV coverage, is concluded. She can also take comfort from the failed constitutional reform process that played out in 2022 and 2023. After the failed referendum on an initial ultra-progressive draft championed by Boric, far-right factions led by Kast's Republican Party triumphed in a May 2023 election that seated a second constitutional convention. But when those delegates produced a correspondingly ultraconservative document, the public soundly rejected that one as well. It's a hint that, after years of tumult following the explosion of nationwide anti-inequality protests in 2019 and the subsequent hardships of the pandemic, a significant constituency of centrist voters are simply searching for safe harbor from the extremes. That may be enough to stave off the challenge from Kast and Kaiser. But assuming she is not pulled too far rightward in the meantime and barring any unforeseen developments, Matthei—with her promise of a hardline but socially tolerant conservatism—still enjoys the pole position. Laurence Blair is a freelance journalist covering South America and the author of 'Patria,' an alternative history of the continent to be published in November 2024. You can follow him on Twitter at @laurieablair. The post Chile's Right Has Pole Position in the Race to Replace Boric appeared first on World Politics Review.
The Sun
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Chile government proposes to legalize abortion up to 14 weeks
SANTIAGO: Chile's government said Wednesday it had introduced a bill in Congress to legalize abortions up to 14 weeks of pregnancy, a key pledge of left-wing President Gabriel Boric during his 2022 election campaign. In Chile, abortions are only permitted for three reasons: a threat to the life of the mother, serious malformation of the foetus, or rape. 'Thirty-six years after therapeutic abortions (terminations due to medical necessity) were banned in our country... we are opening the debate in Congress,' Minister for Women Antonia Orellana told reporters. She was referring to dictator Augusto Pinochet's 1989 repeal of a law allowing abortions on health grounds, which ushered in a total ban on terminations for over 25 years. The bill unveiled by the government on Wednesday comes a year after Boric announced plans to decriminalize all abortions. His minority Frente Amplio (Broad Front) party faces an uphill battle to get the bill through parliament, with the conservative opposition vehemently opposed to expanding abortion rights. Orellana admitted it would be 'naive' to think that abortions would be legal before Boric's presidency ends in March 2026. Decriminalizing abortion under all circumstances is a long-standing demand of feminist groups in Chile. A poll by the Centre for Public Studies showed, however, that only 34 percent of Chileans back the right to abortions regardless of circumstances, whereas 50 percent believe terminations should only be allowed in special cases. Boric, who became Chile's youngest-ever leader in 2021 aged 35, failed in his bid to put expanded abortion rights in a new proposed constitution in 2022. Voters however rejected the draft charter.
Irish Independent
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Independent
Obituary: Jose Mujica, Uruguayan Marxist guerrilla who later became ‘the world's poorest president'
Telegraph obituaries Jose Mujica, who has died aged 89, was a Marxist terrorist who reinvented himself to become a popular liberalising president of Uruguay in his 1970s. Ostentatiously rejecting the rewards of office, he earned the soubriquet 'the world's poorest president'. As a Marxist guerrilla, Mujica survived a gun battle with police during which he was shot six times and later spent two years incarcerated in a hole in the ground, keeping his sanity intact by befriending and conversing with a frog. In his later years his life became more mellow and — as he joined the centre-left Broad Front party — so did his politics.
16-05-2025
- Politics
Latin America's leftist leaders remember Uruguay's 'Pepe' Mujica as generous, charismatic leader
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay -- In the soaring palace of Uruguay's parliament, leftist presidents from the region came to remember former President José Mujica on Thursday as a generous and charismatic leader whose legacy of humility remained an example for the world's politicians. 'A person like Pepe Mujica doesn't die,' Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said as he paid his respects to his longtime friend, widely known as Pepe, at the Legislative Palace in Montevideo where his body lay in state, eulogizing the onetime Marxist guerrilla who spent over a decade in prison in the 1970s as a 'superior human being.' 'His body is gone. But the ideas he put forward over the years demonstrate the generosity of a man who spent 14 years in prison and managed to emerge without hatred toward the people who imprisoned and tortured him,' Lula said. Approaching the coffin, tears streamed down his face. Lula pulled Mujica's lifelong partner and fellow politician, 80-year-old Lucía Topolansky, into a hug and planted a kiss on her forehead. Mujica, a member of Uruguay's leftist Broad Front coalition elected in 2009, and Lula, the standard-bearer of Brazil's Workers' Party who started his second term in 2007, belonged to a generation of leftist leaders elected to office across Latin America in the early years of this century. The movement's power faded more recently as some leftist populist governments became embroiled in corruption scandals. But Mujica stood out for keeping his reputation for honesty and humility intact. 'It's the end of an era. I think Mujica represented one of the last figures of that 'pink tide' that rose in the region in the 2000s,' said Juan Cruz Díaz, a political analyst who runs the Cefeidas Group, a consultancy in Buenos Aires. 'The global impact and iconic figure of President Mujica is probably irreplaceable.' Lula often met Mujica in his three-room farmhouse on the outskirts of Montevideo, where, after retiring from the Senate, the former president tended to his chrysanthemums and dispensed wisdom to a range of visitors — from rock band Aerosmith to philosopher Noam Chomsky. It's also where Mujica died at age 89 on Tuesday, after more than a year spent battling esophageal cancer. Chile's president, Gabriel Boric. On learning of Mujica's death on Tuesday, both Boric and Lula jetted to Uruguay from Beijing, where they had been meeting Chinese officials. They were received by Uruguay's moderate left-wing president, Yamandú Orsi, who was Mujica's preferred candidate in last fall's presidential elections. 'Life goes on, causes remain,' Boric wrote on social media. 'Thank you, dear Pepe, we will carry you with us in every fight.' ___
The Hill
15-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Latin America's leftist leaders remember Uruguay's ‘Pepe' Mujica as generous, charismatic leader
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — In the soaring palace of Uruguay's parliament, leftist presidents from the region came to remember former President Jose Mujica on Thursday as a generous and charismatic leader whose legacy of humility remained an example for the world's politicians. 'A person like Pepe Mujica doesn't die,' Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said as he paid his respects to his longtime friend, widely known as Pepe, at the Legislative Palace in Montevideo where his body lay in state, eulogizing the onetime Marxist guerrilla who spent over a decade in prison in the 1970s as a 'superior human being.' 'His body is gone. But the ideas he put forward over the years demonstrate the generosity of a man who spent 14 years in prison and managed to emerge without hatred toward the people who imprisoned and tortured him,' Lula said. Approaching the coffin, tears streamed down his face. Lula pulled Mujica's lifelong and fellow politician, 80-year-old Lucía Topolansky, into a hug and planted a kiss on her forehead. Mujica, a member of Uruguay's leftist Broad Front coalition elected in 2009, and Lula, the standard-bearer of Brazil's Workers' Party who started his second term in 2007, belonged to a generation of leftist leaders elected to office across Latin America in the early years of this century. The movement's power faded in recent years as some governments became embroiled in corruption scandals. But Mujica stood out for keeping his reputation for honesty and humility intact. Lula frequently met Mujica in his three-room farmhouse on the outskirts of Montevideo, where, after retiring from the Senate, the former president tended to his chrysanthemums and dispensed wisdom to a range of visitors — from rock band Aerosmith to philosopher Noam Chomsky. It's also where Mujica died at age 89 on Tuesday, after more than a year spent battling esophageal cancer. Another leftist leader paying tribute to Mujica in Montevideo on Thursday was Chile's president, Gabriel Boric. On learning of Mujica's death on Tuesday, both Boric and Lula jetted to Uruguay from Beijing, where they had been meeting Chinese officials. They were received by Uruguay's moderate left-wing president, Yamandú Orsi, who was Mujica's preferred candidate in last fall's presidential elections. 'Life goes on, causes remain,' Boric wrote on social media. 'Thank you, dear Pepe, we will carry you with us in every fight.'
