Who is Jeannette Jara, the Communist who wants to be Chile's next president?

By Alexander Villegas

Saddled with an unpopular incumbent president, Chile's left made a bold choice to contest a resurgent right in this year's presidential election - Jeannette Jara, a member of the Communist Party.

Jara, the candidate for the ruling Unity for Chile coalition, has tried to win over skeptical voters by championing her track record of pushing through popular legislation on pensions and a reduced workweek under President Gabriel Boric.

But Jara has faced an uphill battle. Although she narrowly won the November first round, opinion polls suggest her right-wing rival, Jose Antonio Kast, will triumph in Sunday's second round, picking up most of the votes from three other right-wing candidates who fell short.

Jara has been encumbered by Boric's unpopularity and her own party affiliation in a country that remains haunted by the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship that followed the 1973 coup against democratically elected Marxist president Salvador Allende.

"I think a lot of stories about the (Communist Party) stem from the Cold War and aren't representative of the current situation," Jara told Reuters in July. "In Chile we have a profound commitment to democracy and respect for institutional norms."

Jara joined the party as a student leader in the 1990s and bounced between government and the private sector. Before serving as Boric's labor minister, Jara worked in several ministries under center-left former President Michelle Bachelet.

CAMPAIGN FOCUS SHIFTS

Jara's campaign kicked off by seeking to focus on her plans for stimulating sluggish economic growth and addressing long-running concerns over income inequality, which triggered widespread protests in 2019.

"We can't keep having two Chiles in the same country, one for well-off sectors and the other for the vast majority," she said in July's interview.

But, trying to gain ground on Kast, she has also increasingly said she would crack down on crime. While Chile remains one of the safest countries in Latin America, an influx of organized crime has led to a rising murder rate and hurt economic growth, with a recent spike in high-profile incidents like kidnappings and assassinations.

"I will use all the tools that the rule of law gives us to safeguard public security," she said in the final televised debate with Kast on Tuesday evening, adding that she was prepared to declare a state of emergency if necessary.

She has, however, criticized Kast and other right-wing candidates - who have blamed the rising crime on increasing numbers of migrants - for some of their more hardline policies, such as building a border wall.

No matter Jara's policies, given the unpopularity of Boric, "even if she had been Bachelet in her prime" she would have struggled to win over voters, said Patricio Navia, a Chilean professor of liberal studies at New York University.

"But furthermore, Jara is a communist, which makes it more difficult... Her campaign did not go well, she started off as very pacifist and then got really aggressive. So we never knew who Jara was."