José Antonio Kast

José Antonio Kast's 2017 campaign logo

Republican Party logo

On 18 August 2017, he officially registered his independent candidacy with the Electoral Service, presenting 43,461 signatures.[13] He was supported by right-wing, conservative, libertarian, nationalist and retired military groups, among others.[14][15][16] Kast promoted a "less taxes, less government, pro-life",[17] as well as anti-illegal immigration[18] government program. His support of the Military Government led to much controversy during his campaign, especially his proposal to forgive convicts over 80 years old who have age-related illnesses, including those who were convicted of human rights violations under Pinochet's government.[17] He got 523,213 votes in the 2017 presidential election, representing 7.93% of the total votes and landing in the fourth place, even though opinion polls only showed a 2% to 3% support for him.[19] In the second round of the election, he supported Sebastián Piñera, who won the election. He remarked that "[In today's world,] Chileans need God", and said that the state should promote religion in schools by having available teachers for this subject when students choose to have them.[20]

In terms of international relations, he proposed to close the border with Bolivia, arguing that this measure would allow for a more effective fight against drug trafficking. In 2018, he called on the government to sever diplomatic relations with France in retaliation for the asylum granted to former guerrilla Ricardo Palma Salamanca.[21]

On March 2018, during a tour on some Chilean universities, Kast was scheduled to give a talk at the Arturo Prat University in Iquique, but was physically assaulted by protesters opposing his political views.[22] Kast also claimed censorship by the University of Concepción[23] and the Austral University of Chile.[24]

In the 2018 Brazilian general election, Kast supported Jair Bolsonaro.[25] On April 2018, José Antonio Kast launched the right-wing political movement called Republican Action.[26]

On September 2019, Kast was accused of not declaring amounts of money transferred to companies in Panama. Kast recognized the existence of these companies but denied that he owned them, saying that they were owned by his brother Christian. He then defended the right of the people to invest abroad.[27]

On May 2019, he created the think tank Republican Ideas and on June 2019 he created the Chilean Republican Party. He opposed the demonstrations that took place during the 2019 Chilean protests, saying that they were not part of a social movement but were instead acts of violence organized by terrorists.[8] As approval for the protests decreased, Kast was able to establish support of Chileans who opposed the violence observed during the protests.[28] During the 2020 Chilean national plebiscite regarding changing the Constitution of Chile, he was one of the main supporters and campaigners for the Reject option,[8] which received 21.72% of the vote, losing to the Approve option, which received 78.28%.

In the 2021 Chilean Constitutional Convention election, he made a political pact with the center-right coalition Chile Vamos to have a joint list of candidates for the election called Vamos por Chile. The list obtained 20.6% of the vote and represents less than one-third of the Constitutional Convention. Kast proposed one of the main candidates of the pact, Teresa Marinovic, whose political views align with Kast's but who was not well received by parts of the center-right. However, Marinovic won with a high percentage of votes and, thanks to D'Hondt method, a lot of other candidates were able to enter the Constitutional Convention with her triumph.

Kast in the 2021 presidential campaign

In 2018, Kast confirmed his intentions of running for president in the 2021 Chilean general election.[29] In this election, he ran under his own Republican Party along with candidates for the Chamber of Deputies and Senate, unlike in his previous presidential candidacy in 2017, in which he ran as an independent. Kast formed the Christian Social Front, a political pact to present a list of candidates from the Republican Party and the Christian Conservative Party.

Kast has held campaign proposals that have been controversial. He supports the pardoning of former Pinochet officials of "advanced age", which would generally include all officials imprisoned.[5] Kast has also proposed banning abortion, abolishing the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality, remove Chile from the United Nations Human Rights Council and building more prisons.[5]

During his campaigning, Kast used the slogan "make Chile a great country", which was compared to Donald Trump's Make America Great Again slogan,[30] with some supporters wearing Make America Great Again apparel at his events.[31][32][33] Kast did not participate in the Chile Vamos presidential primary, which was won by Sebastián Sichel. Sichel was considered as the main right-wing candidate in the polls at the beginning of the election. However, after the first debate on television, Kast started to surpass Sichel to become the top candidate of the right spectrum. He received the most number of votes in the first round of the election, obtaining nearly 28% of total votes cast, and he qualified for the run-off against Gabriel Boric.[34]

Following his success in the first round of elections, Kast obtained the support of most of Chile's right-wing groups, including President Sebastián Piñera.[28] Internationally, Kast has found solidarity with other right-wing figures, signing the Madrid Charter – a document condemning left-wing groups in Ibero-America authored by the far-right Vox party of Spain – beside other international signatories; Rafael López Aliaga of Peru, Javier Milei of Argentina and Eduardo Bolsonaro of Brazil, the son of President Jair Bolsonaro.[35] On 30 November 2021, Kast began to make international connections during his campaign, meeting in Washington, D.C. with Republican United States Senator Marco Rubio, the Chilean ambassador to the Organization of American States and at least twenty American business executives invested in Chile, including María Paulina Uribe of PepsiCo and Joel Velasco of UnitedHealth Group.[5][28][36]