[ad_1]
María Irene Campos was a girl on a mission.
“I wish to ship the message that Chile won’t ever once more be communist,” the 74-year-old retiree proclaimed as she hit the streets final Friday to catch a glimpse of the person she believes can save her South American homeland from such a destiny.
That man is José Antonio Kast – an ultra-conservative lawyer and father of 9, who some name Chile’s reply to Brazil’s radical chief, Jair Bolsonaro – and who’s now only one step away from turning into his nation’s subsequent president.
Fifteen million Chileans will head to the polls on Sunday for the second, decisive spherical of Chile’s presidential election to decide on between the far-right politician and his leftist rival, Gabriel Boric, who seems to carry a slender lead.
“He looks like particular person to me – anyone with conviction,” mentioned Susana Guajardo, 61, one other Kast supporter who had come to see the candidate throughout a marketing campaign go to to Rancagua, a quiet metropolis 50 miles south of Chile’s capital, Santiago.
However the prospect of a four-year Kast presidency has horrified many in Chile and throughout the area and fueled fears that one in all South America’s most affluent and secure democracies might be on the verge of being captured by Steve Bannon-style extremists.
“All the progress now we have made by way of ladies’s rights, inclusion and human rights will probably be affected if Kast wins on Sunday,” warned Gaby Riquelme, a 35-year-old who has spent current weeks pamphleting for Boric.
Riquelme feared Kast, whose Germany-born father was lately revealed to have been a member of the Nazi social gathering, risked plunging Chile into “instability and dysfunction” by opposing the grassroots motion battling to handle its many social issues after 2019’s historic protests.
“Kast will undoubtedly be a step backwards,” she mentioned of the fervent Catholic who vehemently opposes same-sex marriage, lately legalized by Chile’s parliament.
On Tuesday, Chile’s average former president Michelle Bachelet threw her weight behind Boric, telling Chileans they confronted a “basic” alternative and urging them to again a frontrunner who could lead on the nation “down the trail of progress for all”.
Chile’s 2021 race has uncanny and disturbing echoes of the profoundly polarized 2018 vote that noticed Jair Bolsonaro – lengthy seen as a political aberration – acquire management of Latin America’s largest democracy.
Whereas a extra sleek orator than his notoriously blunt Brazilian counterpart, Kast has hoisted nearly similar banners together with legislation and order, opposition to “gender ideology” and a flag-waving antipathy towards the left and its alleged bid to disclaim residents their “freedom”.
“Communism is advancing”, Kast, who’s 55, warned earlier this yr. “Chile wants a political various that seeks to recuperate … the liberty now we have misplaced.”
Boric, in the meantime, has promised “hope will prevail over concern” – a carbon copy of the pledge the leftist Brazilian Fernando Haddad made earlier than dropping to Bolsonaro in October 2018.
Within the weeks since final month’s first-round vote, which he narrowly gained, Kast has tried to melt his tone and play down his hyperlinks to Bolsonaro in an obvious bid to draw average voters.
Throughout the ultimate presidential debate on Monday he rejected claims he was homophobic, claiming that a number of same-sex {couples} had attended his daughter’s marriage ceremony.
However Kast has not at all times been so coy.
On 18 October 2018, 10 days earlier than Bolsonaro gained energy, the Chilean flew to Rio to meet Brazil’s future president. “Jair Bolsonaro represents the hope of freedom, safety, improvement and social justice in a Brazil that was destroyed by the left,” Kast tweeted alongside a photograph of him delivering a vibrant purple Chile soccer shirt. The jersey had been customized with the quantity 17, then the image of Bolsonaro’s far-right candidacy.
The 2 males stayed in contact after Bolsonaro took energy, with the Brazilian newspaper O Globo lately revealing {that a} key connection was the German-Chilean businessman Sven von Storch. He’s the husband of Beatrix von Storch, the deputy chief of the far-right Various for Germany (AfD) social gathering and granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister.
In December 2018, Kast gave a keynote speech at a conservative congress organized by Bolsonaro’s congressman son, Eduardo, within the Brazilian border metropolis of Foz do Iguaçu.
He used a part of his handle to recast Augusto Pinochet’s September 1973 overthrow of Chile’s socialist chief Salvador Allende, simply as Bolsonaro has sought to rewrite the historical past of the Brazilian army dictatorship.
“Allende was overthrown by the folks,” insisted Kast who has praised Pinochet’s “financial legacy”. “We’ve got to rewrite historical past from our standpoint,” he informed delegates.
After Kast’s first-round victory final month, Eduardo – Steve Bannon’s consultant in Latin America – wished the Chilean candidate luck.
“Kast is a patriot, internationally well-connected and a thorn within the facet of the São Paulo Discussion board,” tweeted Bolsonaro, in reference to the leftist alliance that has turn into a bugbear for Latin America’s laborious proper.
Political scientist Robert Funk mentioned inadequate consideration was being paid to the hyperlinks between Kast and the conspiracy-filled, anti-semitism-laced, anti-globalist hard-right “world of Steve Bannon”.
“I believe it is vitally worrying and I’m amazed this has not obtained extra play right here,” mentioned the College of Chile tutorial, calling Kast “half Pinochetista-right, half Catholic-conservatism and half Trumpist-Bolsonaro nationalist populist”.
“What it exhibits is that Kast is an element of a bigger story of worldwide networks … and a motion that’s mainly making an attempt to be disruptive … Kast just isn’t the conservative candidate. He’s the disruptive candidate,” Funk added.
“The story of his contact and help with Bolsonaro, with [the Spanish far-right party] Vox, with AfD – [with] the world of Steve Bannon – is fairly worrying, and never just for Chile. It exhibits how far they’ve managed to get in politics all over the world.”
Kast supporters dismiss claims their guru is a radical, simply as Bolsonaristas think about their authoritarian-minded chief a paragon of democratic, Godly values.
“I don’t discover him excessive within the slightest,” Guajardo mentioned, as Kast strode previous her throughout his go to to Rancagua, to cheers of “Viva Chile!” and “God bless you!”
Later that night Kast took to the stage amid flurries of white confetti to handle a boisterous crowd within the close by city of San Fernando.
He donned a poncho to bounce cueca, Chile’s nationwide dance, and led a solemn rendition of the nationwide anthem whereas a whole bunch of Chilean flags fluttered above the group. “Every of us should exit into the streets and lift the Chilean flag, which represents all of us,” he declared, to rapturous applause.
Lots of his supporters are satisfied the right-winger may save Chile from being plunged again into what they describe as Venezuela-style socialist turmoil.
“I would like democracy, peace and stability,” mentioned Campos. “José Antonio Kast represents all of these items.”
[ad_2]
Source link