Chilean women express fears of far-right presidential candidate | Women’s Rights News

Santiago, Chile – Olga Valenzuela is waiting by the side of a busy street in the Chilean capital in the heat of the end of November, wearing a black T-shirt with the name “Muriel” printed on it.

Muriel, Valenzuela’s daughter, killed her boyfriend four years ago in an argument at their home. She was 19 years old and her boyfriend has yet to go to trial or receive a sentence.

“I’m not a politician, but I’ve joined this group to be heard,” said Valenzuela, who joined thousands of women in a march on Chile’s presidential palace on November 25 to protest violence against women. South American nation.

Several mothers walked beside her, each with their names printed on their T-shirts and holding banners denouncing domestic violence. One member of the group had a proper image of a cardboard cut on his far right face presidential candidateJose Antonio Kast.

Kast, a 55-year-old Catholic god and founder of the far-right Republican Party, he got more votes he received 27.91 percent support from any other candidate in the first round of the Chilean presidential election on November 21. Former student protester Gabriel Boric, 35, will face the protest on December 19.

For Valenzuela and many mothers around her, fears are mounting that a Kast government could exacerbate the demands for justice and escalate the violence that killed her daughter. “No one listened to me, I’m just another mother looking for justice,” Valenzuela told Al Jazeera.

“But I don’t want a Kast government, it’s someone who doesn’t support women.

“I will not have grandchildren,” he added. “But I want my daughter’s friends to live respectfully.”

‘Against the feminist movement’

The UN has called for women Chile to address gender inequalities, low political representation of women in parliament, as well as threats of violence. In 2018, 5.8 percent of Chilean women reported sexual and / or physical abuse at home in the past 12 months, the organization found.

As part of his campaign, Kaste is committed to reducing domestic violence through harsher punishments for perpetrators.

However, during her 16 years in the House of Representatives, she repeatedly voted against gender equality legislation and women’s rights legislation. She reaffirmed her beliefs about the patriarchal family and Catholic family values, which were accepted by women’s rights activists as misogynistic and backward.

In its presidential program, Kast announced plans to eradicate the existing Women’s Ministry, which was created in 2017 to eradicate gender inequality and eradicate violence, and to unite with the Ministry of Social Development.

Earlier this week, with the aim of attracting the support of women voters, she said she would not remove the Women’s Ministry “by name,” but she did not rule out plans to reduce and merge with the other department.

Its program also includes plans to provide subsidies to heterosexual families with children, excluding single mothers and same-sex couples, and to ban abortion in any case, repealing the current rule that allows women to have abortions in cases of rape. if the mother’s life, or if the fetus does not survive.

“She has a strategy against the feminist movement and believes that their values ​​are in line with the concept of family,” said Paulina Vergara, a professor at the Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Chile. “(Women) have so few rights, and without them we will have no real democracy,” Vergara told Al Jazeera.

Far-right party

Kast spent most of his career in the UDI Democratic Union. The party was formed in 1990 by Augusto Pinochet, a 17-year-old legislator who held political office.

Kast broke away from the party in 2016, launching his first campaign for president a year later as an independent candidate, when he finished fourth. 7.9% of the vote. In 2019, he founded the Republican Party with the support of fugitive UDI members who sought a more traditionalist model that was more in line with conservative values ​​and libertarian economies.

The party manifesto It is based on the defense of life that “from creation to natural death,” “the belief in God,” and the family units that involve a man and a woman are “the foundation of society”. He also advocates for low state intervention and a free market economy.

“The reputation of the Republican Party is part of a change in favor of the ultra-right that is taking place around the world,” Vergara said. Poland, Hungary and Spain as examples. “He has a Christian front, and he’s more orthodox and extremist.”

In the November primaries, the Chileans were selected 15 deputies From the Republican Party, 12 men and three women. The tweet and interview clips of an elected deputy Johannes Kaiser went viral after his appointment due to his misogynistic and violent nature.

“62% of women fantasize about being raped, and at the same time they take to the streets to protest, why,” Kaiser said. He tweeted in 2018. In a video posted five years ago, he called immigrants “rapists” and questioned whether women should have the right to vote.

Kast rejected Kaiser’s comments, forcing him to resign from the Republican Party a few days after he was elected, even though Kaiser would remain in office as an independent deputy. Kaiser also apologized for his comments, stressing that he was sarcastic.

To Vergara, these “jokes” reflect serious ethical flaws within the party. “They make jokes about rape and use arguments based on freedom of expression to defend their opinions, but it doesn’t make them less violent,” he said.

The Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment from Al Jazeera, nor did press contacts for Kasten’s presidential campaign.

But Kast has dismissed the allegations of misogyny. “I am the son, husband and father of horrible women,” she said on a radio is broadcast this week. “I will work tirelessly to ensure that all women live in freedom and tranquility.”

Women’s vote “very important”

However, the nature of her program has alienated many women, including traditional conservative voters. Natalia Borquez is a 43-year-old dental surgeon who has decided to vote for the left-wing presidential candidate for the first time in her life this month.

“With Kast, we would lose all our rights,” she told Al Jazeera, explaining that she found the issues of Kast’s program to be worrying, such as the abolition of the Women’s Ministry and a ban on abortion in all states. “Removal is a denial of these things happening, placing women back as second-class citizens,” she said.

Chilean presidential candidate Gabriel Boric has overtaken his far-right rival in a Dec. 19 vote, according to poll data. [File: Andres Poblete/AP Photo/]

Borquez plans to vote for Boric, “because he wants his vote to be important,” but said it was not an easy decision. Some women friends of her conservative tendencies said she had decided to abstain from voting voluntarily.

In a recent survey, Boric Kast passed 8 percent, in a comfortable leadership position, said 59 percent of the women surveyed supported Boric.

They are 51 percent of women Chilean elected officials, and Vergara said women like Borquez and Valenzuela could use their votes to specifically denounce Kast to decide the next president.

“In 1988, women’s suffrage was very important in the vote against the Pinochet regime,” she said. “I hope this time history will repeat itself.”