Far-right and communist in Chile's second round of elections

Former far-right lawmaker José Antonio Cast is well on his way to becoming Chile's president, although in yesterday's first round of elections, the ruling coalition's candidate, Jeanette Hara, a member of the Communist Party, won the most votes.

Hara had a smaller than expected lead in yesterday's election, winning 27 percent of the vote, while Kast received the support of 24 percent of voters, according to the Associated Press.

Kast, an ultraconservative lawyer who opposes abortion and same-sex marriage and expresses admiration for US President Donald Trump, will be the favorite in the second round of the election on December 14, because right-wing candidates won almost 70 percent of the vote yesterday.

This result was influenced by the concerns of many Chileans about organized crime, illegal immigration, and unemployment in one of the safest and most prosperous countries in Latin America.

Kast, a father of nine, has managed to push his traditional Catholic beliefs and nostalgia for certain aspects of the brutal dictatorship of the military junta, led by General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), into the political mainstream.

He is the chairman of the Republican Party, which he founded 10 years ago, and his campaign focused on plans to crack down on crime, build a large wall on the border, and deport tens of thousands of migrants without valid documents.

Janet Hara, a former labor minister in the center-left government of Chilean President Gabriel Boric, promises to expand the social safety net and fight money laundering and drug trafficking.

It was cheerful at Casto's campaign headquarters early this morning - young Chileans wrapped in national flags were drinking beer and rolling cigarettes, and their leader promised them a radical transformation in the security sector.

In yesterday's election, which featured eight candidates, populist businessman and prominent economist Franco Parisi came in third place, winning 20 percent of the vote. He campaigned on a strong law and order agenda, promising to plant mines along Chile's northern border to prevent people from crossing.

Libertarian MP Johannes Kaiser, a former YouTube provocateur who presented himself as an even more radical alternative to Caste, received 14 percent of the vote.

The candidate of Chile's traditional center-right coalition, Evelin Matei, came in fifth with 12,5 percent of the vote.

Kast is the favorite in the second round, although not all voters who opted for right-wing candidates yesterday will vote for him. Some Kaiser and Matei voters, including members of the LGBT community, women and atheists, have said they would not support Kast in the second round because of his ultra-conservative Christian values.

But Hara, a longtime member of the Communist Party of Chile that supports the autocratic socialist governments of Venezuela and Cuba, is unlikely to be supported by a large portion of voters who supported Kaiser's plans to deport migrants to prison in El Salvador, or Matei's intention to consider reinstating the death penalty. In addition, both Kaiser and Matei have announced that they will support Casto in the runoff.

Unlike Cast, Hara cannot count on significant support from voters of other candidates - she was already supported in the first round by all six parties of the ruling coalition, while other leftists who participated in the elections received a negligible number of votes.

The election results in Chile confirmed a rightward shift across Latin America, where popular discontent with the economy is simmering, and where right-wingers are defeating leftists who came to power after the coronavirus pandemic, having largely failed to deliver on promises of social change and a fairer distribution of wealth.

Chilean analyst Patricio Navia, a professor at New York University, says that "voters are dissatisfied with governments across Latin America because economies are not growing and there are no new jobs, and people remember that 10 years ago they paid lower prices for almost everything."