By Workers Socialist Movement (MST), a section of the IWU-FI, Chile.
30 November 2021. The Pro-Pinochet Kast surprisingly won the first round with 1.961.122 votes to 1.814.809 for the FA (Broad Front) candidate Gabriel Boric. The reason for this result is that the reactionary and misogynist candidate of the Social Christian Front capitalised on the political crisis of the Piñera government. This political crisis, which had such an impact on the Vamos Chile (Let’s Go Chile) primaries, leaving the UDI (Independent Democratic Unity) candidate Lavín behind, and then led to Sichel’s landslide, allowed Kast to drag the right-wing vote and get in the first round just over 200,000 votes the right-wing got with the rejection in the 2020 plebiscite, but almost half a million votes less than Piñera got in the first round of 2017.
Gabriel Boric’s electoral result shows he did not organise, group and drag to the vote a large part of the 5.8 million votes that were cast to achieve the constitutional plebiscite. Boric and his alliance with the PC failed to defeat Kast because throughout the election campaign he distanced himself from the popular demands that are still pending and unresolved since the social outbreak and ran as the candidate of the Peace Accord that saved the Piñera government and the rotten regime, which now gave him space for the electoral reorganisation of the right. Boric positioned himself against the fourth withdrawal (of pension funds), demonstrated against the freedom of political prisoners seeking to “turn to the centre” when that centre is in crisis and only capitalised on just over 11per cent of the votes with the candidacy of Yasna Provoste; thus leaving – besides the bankruptcy of the People’s List – without electoral representation for the hundreds of thousands who mobilised in October 2019.
The elections showed the deepening of the political crisis in the country, as the traditional parties of the Concertación fell behind the candidates who did not take part in the primaries and 12 of the 24 legal parties lost their legality. An expression of this crisis is also the votes got by Parisi, a candidate who, despite not being in Chile because he is still in the United States as he has an arrest warrant for non-payment of family pensions, got 12.8 per cent of the votes. The fall of the traditional parties of the regime, together with the growing social crisis, the economic crisis of Covid, the low salaries and the pauperisation of life provoked a political polarisation that Kast knew how to capitalise on from the right and that we must now defeat.
Kast is a pro-Pinochet who seeks to crush the struggles and we must defeat him at the ballot box by voting for Boric.
The candidacy of J.A. Kast, his program, his alliances, his family background and his public statements show him as a faithful defender of the Pinochet dictatorship that murdered, tortured, disappeared and persecuted hundreds of thousands of social and political fighters to impose the Condor Plan and implement the economic model that until today all governments have maintained as a legacy and against which millions rose in the October 2019 social outburst. Kast defends repressive and torturer organisations, such as the DINA or the CNI; Kast is a friend and political partner of the murderer Krasnoff and the deputy Johannes Kaiser. In his political programme for the elections, he expressed positions that led him to receive the popular nickname of “The Chilean Bolsonaro” or “The Trump of Chile”. He reflects his misogyny by rejecting women’s rights and the rights of sexual dissidents, whom he continues to pathologise and persecute. Against migrants, he proposed digging a ditch in the country’s north to prevent their entry, and he celebrated and encouraged xenophobic actions against Venezuelan migrants. Kast’s government will seek not only to sustain the model but also to deepen it. He will keep political prisoners in jail and also deepen the repression and criminalisation of social protest, all at the service of sustaining the repudiated AFP (private retirement system), taking care of the companies that plunder our resources and pollute the environment, firing 30.000 public workers, annulling the decree 170 of special education: not only is Kast the continuity of Piñera’s government, but he also represents the most reactionary of the right-wing sectors that demand an iron fist against those who struggle. Kast cannot pass and we must defeat him at the ballot box by voting massively for Boric!
For the broadest unity against Kast: For unitary committees for the vote for Boric!
The obvious threat posed by Kast demands the broadest possible unity to defeat him. There is no neutrality, nor can we remain indifferent to the danger that lurks. Kast already has the support of most right-wing organisations, such as the UDI, Evopoli, RN, among others. The mass media seek to sweeten his positions to hide the danger and the big capitalists – finance capital – will seek to support his candidacy. Working people and hundreds of thousands did not go to vote in the first round because of their legitimate distrust and apathy with the exploitative and corrupt regime, so we must organise the vote for Boric from below.
From the MST, we call on workers, popular sectors, women, dissidents, in the territories and the native peoples to vote massively for Boric to defeat Kast in the runoff election as an urgent and necessary step. These committees are necessary, because we cannot improvise this battle and because we must organise to defend and extend our vote for Boric in work and study places, in the streets, squares and avenues.
This call for the broadest unity for the vote for Boric does not mean that we have expectations of a FA+PC (Broad Front+Communist Party) government. We differentiate ourselves from their politics while side by side we fight together to defeat Kast, and we will remain mobilised in an independent struggle for each one of our demands and in permanent support for the ongoing struggles that continue to seek a fundamental solution to the capitalist crisis.
We are clear: to defeat Kast we must vote for Boric and organise ourselves so that those votes show all the fury and anger of the people. The defeat of the pro-Pinochet Kast will be a triumph of the working people that will open a new chapter in the social and political struggle, we will be in a better position to deepen the mobilisation for decent wages and pensions, to end the AFP that steal our pensions. To put an end to the Labour Code that condemns us to precariousness and to win the right to branch bargaining and to strike. Kast’s defeat will be a new milestone in the fight for public education and health and to end privatisation and profit. Kast’s defeat in the runoff election is a slap in the face to the reactionaries and in defence of women’s rights and dissidence; to put an end to sexist violence, to win legal, safe and free abortion, Comprehensive Sex Education and labour quota, health and education so that trans people stop dying at 37. The defeat of Kast is a mandatory step to end the constitution and the Pinochet model, for the freedom of political prisoners, the demilitarisation of the country, the end of repression and the disbanding of the carabineros (police force) and the self-determination of the Mapuche people.
Let us fight without mercy against Kast and his allies! Today Let us organise unitary committees in every neighbourhood, school and workplace to vote for Boric! From now on, let us continue to mobilise to end this exploitative and oppressive system by throwing the capitalists and bureaucrats out of government and replacing it with a government of the workers and peoples that democratically organises society in the service of the workers and popular sectors and not of the big capitalists. Let’s get to work! There is no time to lose.
