Even earlier than José Antonio Kast popped into his high-altitude restaurant for a plate of alpaca ribs, Carlos Valdebenito Pacheco was set on voting for the ultra-conservative favorite to turn out to be the subsequent president of Chile.
“Undoubtedly – 100%,” enthused the 55-year-old waiter from Visviri, an remoted Andean outpost greater than 4,000 metres above sea degree on Chile’s triple border with Bolivia and Peru.
Just a few days earlier, Kast and his entourage had pushed for hours alongside treacherous mountain roads to succeed in the volcano-flanked farming group – inhabitants 120 – of their nation’s northernmost tip.
Valdebenito mentioned it was Kast’s hardline stance on safety and migration that drew him to a politician whose ideological bedfellows embrace rightwing figures similar to Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and El Salvador’s authoritarian chief, Nayib Bukele.
“An iron fist! That’s what we’d like! Like a Bukele!” Valdebenito declared, in reference to the Central American president who has imprisoned at least 2% of his country’s adult population as a part of a controversial crackdown on gangs.
Polls counsel lots of Chile’s 15 million voters agree. Heading into Sunday’s first spherical, the ruling coalition’s Communist get together candidate, Jeannette Jara, leads the race, with 25% of anticipated votes to Kast’s 23%.
However political observers consider Kast, 59, an admirer of the dictator Augusto Pinochet identified for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, is more likely to win a 14 December runoff, persevering with a rightward tilt in South America.
In latest days polls have proven the unconventional libertarian Johannes Kaiser – who has been described as Chile’s reply to Argentina’s rightwing president, Javier Milei – closing in on Kast.
Kast’s draconian pitch to voters on crime and immigration has a distinctly Trumpian feel, with the far-right chief promising to place “Chileans first” after 4 years beneath the centre-left former pupil chief Gabriel Boric, who got here to energy after mass protests rocked the nation in 2019.
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