Kast, the pinochetista promises a peaceful future in Chile
In this second presidential round, Jose Antonio Kast, will contest the electoral contest against the liberal congressman. Gabriel Boric, who is 20 years younger than him and part of another era of lawmakers that emerged from the 2011 student protests.
"I invite you to dare for a future in harmony," proposed in his electoral campaign for the elections this Sunday the traditional Kast, who guarantees that he will restore the lost order in Chile.
Jose Antonio is an admirer of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, he is against abortion and homosexual marriage. Kast, 55, is a fervent Catholic, married with nine children.
"They say I'm extreme, but extreme in what?" The candidate wondered during his speech, who rarely loses his composure and always maintains an imperturbable smile despite the criticism or aggression he receives.
Kast is running for president, and will be running in these elections against the leftist deputy, Gabriel Boric. In the first round, Kast was the winner with 27.9% of votes over the other seven applicants.
"Don't call me an extreme right-winger, as I am not. I trust you will call me a judicious competitor," Kast said. In the second round, he renewed his government program, which initially included the repeal of the abortion law.
For the contest, he assured that he will not push for the end of the abortion law, -approved in 2017-, Nor does it plan to close the Flacso campuses, even though it will end its tax exceptions. In addition, he changed his intention to remove the Ministry of Women.
Despite everything, he maintains his decision to build a trench on the northern line to prevent the entry of illegal migrants.
Right-wing family
Kast, is a lawyer from the Catholic University, married to María Pía Adriasola, who is his colleague. In a 2017 meeting with the newspaper El Mercurio, Adriasola describes her hard first years of marriage, especially due to her husband's "secrecy" and the imposition of not taking contraceptives.
"We had two babies and I wanted to stop for a while. I went to a doctor who gave me birth control pills. When I got home, I said to my husband: Now, this is what we have to do." And he said to me: “Are you crazy? You can't,” Adriasola said. He added that in that episode they sought the guidance of a father and used natural measures and condoms.
Kast and his family are practitioners of the Schoenstatt Catholic movement.
His wife makes melodies of adoration and family solidarity for him. The couple sing them with their children, raised in the farming town of Paine, on the border of Santiago, where Kast's father arrived in 1950 from Germany, where he was a warrior in the Nazi armed forces.
From there, the father of the presidential hopeful promoted an empire of sausages and a chain of restaurants called "Bavaria."
"Human rights representatives denounce that members of Kast's family worked together to imprison adversaries in Paine during the Pinochet dictatorship."
The radical pole of the right
Kast was a longtime militant in the traditionalist Independent Democratic Union party, which he left in 2016 to become the Republican Party in 2019, with significantly more conservative thoughts.
In his first presidential nomination, in 2017, he reached fourth place, with 7.93% of the votes. Before that, he was a deputy for four terms of the UDI.
He has never denied his esteem for the Pinochet system, which left more than 3,200 dead and missing in Chile. At a meeting, Kast said that if Pinochet were alive and running for office, he would vote for him.
“There is a situation that makes a difference with what happens in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. I think that Nicaragua fully reflects what did not happen in Chile" said Kast in a question and answer session before the first round.