[𝑪𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒆] 𝑱𝒐𝒔𝒆́ 𝑨𝒏𝒕𝒐𝒏𝒊𝒐 𝑲𝒂𝒔𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒐𝒏 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒅𝒆𝒇𝒆𝒂𝒕 𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒕 𝒓𝒊𝒗𝒂𝒍 𝒊𝒏 𝒂𝒏 𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒄𝒂𝒎𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒈𝒏 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒗𝒊𝒍𝒚 𝒎𝒐𝒅𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒏 𝑫𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒅 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒎𝒑’𝒔.

Gooey moaning, one and all. I greet you well.

Or I would, if I wasn't laid up.

I thought I was having another mini-stoke episode on Friday. A very odd thing - dizzy, garbled speech, almost exactly the same. Her Indoors wasted no time in summoning the paramedics (as we call ambulence crews these days).

They quickly detected very low blood pressure, and whisked me off to the James Paget hospital. I was actually coming out of the episode by the time we got there. I was kept in overnight, though I felt fine by then. Ramipril discontinued, another medication prescribed, and they packed me off home.

Her Indoors kept me away from the computer yesterday - "You must lie FLAT" - though I did have an abortive attempt at posting.

Anyway, before I return to my FLAT position, I came across this hopeful story in today's Sunday Telegraph.

The winds of change do seem to be blowing away the Left globally, but I am minded that winds, no matter how strong, have little to no effect upon what is buried beneath the surface.

And that worries me.

Paywalled from today Sunday Telegraph:

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𝑻𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒌𝒆𝒆𝒑 𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒎𝒊𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒔 𝒅𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒕𝒆 ‘𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅’𝒔 𝒎𝒐𝒔𝒕 𝒑𝒐𝒍𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒆𝒅 𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏’

𝐉𝐨𝐬𝐞́ 𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐨 𝐊𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐩𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫

by Kieran Kelly

A father of nine who praised General Augusto Pinochet is promising to build a trench on Chile’s northern border to keep out migrants and criminals.

José Antonio Kast is on course to defeat his communist rival in an election campaign heavily modelled on Donald Trump’s.

The 59-year-old Christian lawyer has spent years on the political fringes, failing twice in his bid to become president in 2017 and 2021.

But after the first round of voting, he is the overwhelming favourite to return Chile to the nationalist, socially conservative Right with a series of radical proposals that would not look out of place in Mr Trump’s America.

His pitch – often delivered via short, polished clips on TikTok – centres around crime, migration and disorder, which he says have flourished under the country’s Left-wing, student protest president.

Mr Kast has vowed to build a three-metre trench along Chile’s northern border with Bolivia and Peru, expand deportations and construct “super-prisons” to house gang members he claims have entered via mass migration.

His campaign taps into fears that Chile could follow once-peaceful countries that are now gripped by gang violence, such as Ecuador.
Mr Kast’s ascent also lines up with the broader lurch to the Right across Latin America. From Nayib Bukele in El Salvador to Ecuador’s law-and-order president Daniel Noboa, voters unhappy with stagnation and a surge in violent crime have turned sharply against incumbents.

Mr Kast now faces Jeannette Jara, a lifelong communist and former labour minister. She came just ahead of him in the first round of voting, but with most centre-Right candidates rallying behind him, Mr Kast’s path to victory appears clear.

“Chile will choose between two completely opposing models for the country,” says Eduardo Cader, director of the Madrid-based conservative think tank Foro Madrid, which has ties to Spain’s hard-Right Vox party.

“On the one side is the continuation of a socialist project… On the other is José Antonio Kast, who represents order, security, economic recovery, and the restoration of the country’s traditional values.”

He argued: “Kast’s victory is crucial to preventing Chile from becoming the next haven for organised crime in the Americas.”

Chile’s election comes as several Latin American countries grapple with the rise of violent criminal networks, often linked to migration flows from Venezuela.

Illegal immigration, particularly via the northern border, “has grown explosively”, he warned, citing the killing of Ronald Ojeda, a Venezuelan military officer who had sought refuge in Chile.

Mr Kast’s rise is particularly significant given that Chile only elected Gabriel Boric – the millennial Left-wing protest leader – four years ago after a wave of demonstrations over inequality and corruption.

But the constitutional overhaul Boric championed collapsed following accusations of overreach, fracturing his fragile coalition and alienating moderate voters.

“In that constitutional process, the Left really overplayed its hand,” says Tom Long, professor of international relations at the University of Warwick.

The failure of the draft charter, followed by a conservative takeover of the constitutional assembly, marked a visible shift. “Things have been moving back to the Right, at least away from that particular moment of post-protest euphoria.”

The protests also left a physical and psychological imprint on Santiago. “You walk around Santiago and you see where buildings were destroyed in the protests,” Professor Long adds.

For many Chileans, disorder, however statistical crime trends are interpreted, has become a feature of daily life.

“This election has been about security, security, security. Certain metrics haven’t necessarily increased like homicide, but it’s about the perception too, especially with the rise of kidnappings,” says Andrés Dockendorff, a political scientist at the University of Chile.

Mr Kast’s critics see his promise of order as inseparable from a more troubling legacy. The son of a German who fought for the Nazis during the Second World War, he was for years a staunch defender of General Pinochet’s dictatorship, though has distanced himself from the former military leader in order to appeal to moderate voters.

His opponents warn that his proposals – from trenches and electric fences on the border – echo authoritarian elements of Chile’s past. Supporters, however, insist he is the only candidate capable of stemming the advance of organised crime.

If polls hold until the election on December 14, Mr Kast will become the most Right-wing leader elected in Chile since the return of democracy in 1990. Whether his promise of order delivers stability, or deepens a national divide, may become the defining feature of Chile’s next political era.