“Thank God very much, and long live Chile!” said José Antonio Kast to end the most anticipated speech of election day at the Republican Party headquarters. The stage was set up in the patio of an old and traditional house in Las Condes -one of the most affluent sectors of Santiago-, where some 250 adherents of the far-right group celebrated a historic electoral result last night, which not even the most optimistic anticipated. just a couple of hours before.
Even with sunlight, the first Republicans – coming from different sectors of Santiago, from children to the elderly, although young people between the ages of 20 and 30 predominated – began to appear after five in the afternoon. Almost in silence, they arrived with Chilean flags, banners on which the words refresh, recover, rebuild; while the most daring wore t-shirts of Lycra fitted, stamped with the muscular torso of the comic book character Captain America: the shield of the Marvel superhero is very similar to a logo of this political force.
At six o’clock in the evening, when the cold of the autumn afternoon was beginning to set in, no one spoke of a “beating” in the place, except Ruth Hurtado, the party’s General Secretary. On the other hand, the 40-year-old leader preferred to point out that in La Araucanía – a region located 650 kilometers south of Santiago, and which she represented as conventional in the first constituent process – there had been a “violent” morning, with barricades and stoning of buses that transported people to polling places.
The mood began to change when the television channels began to broadcast the counts of the first tables live, which immediately marked a favorable trend for the Republicans.
“We are going to celebrate today,” shouted a militant who entered wrapped in a two-meter-long flag, when from outside the first honking of the cars that passed in front of the house was heard, flanked by half a dozen trucks with antennas that transmitted live the first official reactions of the main figures of the party.
In front of twenty cameras, the senator and one of the emblematic faces of the community, Rojo Edwards, said: “One has to be calm when defeated and humble when triumphant.”
Responding to the question about a goal for elected candidates, Edwards was calm and satisfied with the possibility that the Republicans would add five councilors for the convention that will begin work on June 7. “If there are more, they are welcome,” Edwards finished.
It was 6:45 p.m. and, at that point, one of those five members of the Convention was, surely, the constitutional lawyer Luis Silva, who stood with aplomb in front of the microphones to say: “there is talk of five directors, but we hope they will be more”, highlighting that the results were a reflection of a long-term work started in 2017 by José Antonio Kast, when he applied for La Moneda as an independent, before founding the party in 2019.
![Members of the Republican Party wave Chilean flags after the publication of the results of the elections this Sunday.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/HmY98CdjXvVJk1guleFo4oVw9W8=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/MRPMUGD6RBCWJAH4U5HLDUCY7Y.jpg)
“We are far from wanting to boycott this process, as well as renouncing the principles that have characterized us, which are not a novelty or a secret to anyone,” commented Silva, who with the passing of the hours would become the most voted in the country, by obtaining just over 700,000 votes in the Metropolitan Region and pulverizing the forecasts of various surveys.
At 7:30 p.m. no one had any doubts of a devastating victory at the Republican headquarters, and Chilean flags were waving in the main patio of the house while dozens chanted a campaign song, titled The pace of rebuildingwhose chorus says “Rebuild this country…together / Recover… peace and tranquility / Refresh… we are going to give new faces / Re-Re-Re-Re Republicans”, a mixture of pop and urban sounds.
“It’s a real party at this time,” a television reporter described live. “You can see the effervescence that is in this place. I think they expected a good result here, but the truth is that they themselves are surprised”.
One of the astonished was Ives Arancibia, 34, a creative adviser to Luis Silva’s campaign. “People want to return to order, to the way everything was before the criminal outbreak of October 18″, was his explanation for the triumph of the community, alluding to the social revolt of 2019.
![Followers of the Republican Party celebrate their victory in the elections for the constituent process.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/g-AuB8soxIqbJ5yibsgiwMmrLKw=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/547QPCPB7RGLJNKM5EVIT6PBUI.jpg)
“I think this is a vote to punish the Boric government,” said José Hidalgo, 61, a recent party militant, who explained the success by the party’s ability “to interpret the real problems of Chileans today: crime , terrorism in the Araucanía Region and unleashed immigration in the north”.
Although migration issues are a central part of the discourse of the party born in 2019, several migrants also celebrated in the place, such as the 58-year-old Venezuelan Yvel Fernández. From Maracaibo, in 2019 she arrived in Santiago “fleeing from a country that was killed on every corner for stealing a cell phone.” Faced with the migratory challenges facing Chile and the harsh position of the Republican Party, Fernández said he agreed, arguing that immigrants should be “classified to find out who is who, and return those who commit crimes.”
At nine o’clock on the dot, the most important moment of the night began with Kast’s appearance on stage. “Very good evening, Republicans,” said the leader of the group, in a mood far from the reigning triumphalism. Setting a serious, almost laconic tone from the first lines, in his speech Kast began by saying that Chileans today are burdened by economic uncertainty and security problems, to later describe the Boric Administration as “incapable” of solving them.
“Chile has defeated a failed government,” said Kast, already closing his speech. “Today is the first day of a better future for our country. A new beginning for Chile. Today we will begin to rebuild and take back our beloved country.”
Already excited about the 2025 presidential campaign, the crowd of Republicans erupted in applause and closed the night shouting: “It feels, it feels, Kast Presidente… It feels, it feels, Kast Presidente…”.
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