Daughter of one of the general members of the coup Military Junta of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and former mayor of the Santiago municipality of Providencia, the conservative Evelyn Matthei He will try for the second time, at 72 years old, his great frustrated dream: to become president of Chile.
And she will do so in a complex scenario, marked by the advance of the extreme right and the polls against her, after a long campaign that began at the beginning of the year, when she was designated as the candidate of the traditional right, a coalition that brings together National Renewal (RN)of the late former president Sebastian Piñeraand the ultraconservative Independent Democratic Union (UDI), founded during the dictatorship, among others.
The wear and tear of so many months exposed to scrutiny defending her candidacy, along with several communication errors and controversial statements, such as when she said that the search for the detainees still missing was “revenge,” have been the factors that have undermined her chances of moving on to the second round.
But also the ultraliberal and extremist discourse of his main rivals, José Antonio Kast, and Johannes Kaiserwho have overtaken it and have placed themselves several points ahead, according to the latest surveys.
To try to neutralize them and come back, Mattheia UDI activist, has resorted in the last two weeks to her government experience, as former mayor of Providencia, one of the traditional neighborhoods of the capital, and as a minister during the first Piñera Government, a name with a good memory in the Chilean moderate right.
And to extremist and gimmicky slogans similar to those of his rivals, like when in the last debate he said that criminals with them will go “to jail or the cemetery.”
Ties with the dictatorship
Born on November 11, 1953 in Santiago, into a conservative family of Spanish and German descent, and trained as an economist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, her first foray into politics was controversial: in the 1988 plebiscite she actively defended the continuity of Pinochet, who had to leave the Presidency months later after the overwhelming victory of the ‘no’.
However, that defeat did not prevent her from moving forward with a budding political career within the framework of the RN, with which that same year she was elected deputy representing the municipalities of Las Condes, Vitacura and Lo Barnechea, the three richest in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago.
There he became part of the closest circle of Piñera and his Minister of Defense, Andrés Allamand, who directed Chilean diplomacy in Piñera’s second term.
Elected president of the Senate Finance Commission – the first woman to hold this important position -, Piñera added two years to her first cabinet as Minister of Labor and Social Security, which allowed her to strengthen her position in the party and win the candidacy for the 2014 presidential elections.
presidential defeat
On that occasion he suffered his first major defeat at the hands of the socialist Michelle Bachelet, whom he had known since childhood, since both were daughters of senior Air Force commanders; However, Alberto Bachelet was a brigadier general close to the Popular Unity Government, led by the socialist Salvador Allende and overthrown by Pinochet in the 1973 coup d’état.
One of the latest controversies surrounding Matthei has arisen on this issue, after the conservative candidate justified months ago the murders committed at that time and was later forced to clarify her statements.
After her electoral failure, she sought refuge in local politics and in 2016 she was elected mayor of Providencia, a position she left last year to lead the presidential candidacy in the November elections, in which she represents the traditional right – the Chile Vamos coalition – and the center Democratic and Yellow parties, made up of former Christian Democrat militants.
Matthei emerged at the beginning of the year as the favorite of the traditional right, but began to fall in the polls when, unlike the left and the center-left, her sector and the extreme right failed to agree on a single candidate.