Evelyn Matthei, Chile’s top-rated political figure and the traditional right’s main presidential ticket heading into 2025, is not a phenomenon. The economist has received the highest positive rating from the authorities for months and has been in politics for a generation. From the “prehistory” of the current Chile-Vamos coalition, as it catalogs the time when they appeared together with Sebastián Piñera in one of the first political scandals at the beginning of the democratic transition. In 1992, both were members of the “Youth Patrol” of the Renovación Nacional, a center-right formation that tried to shake off the Pinochet dictatorship. Both she as a representative and he as a senator sought to achieve La Moneda. During the election campaign, in order to become the bet of her sector, a telephone recording was leaked in which Piñera planned to publicly weaken her then party partner, a woman who was asserting herself in a predominantly male world, on a television program.
“The funny thing is that he elegantly tries to leave her as a little, clueless goat, fighting blindly, without any firmness,” Piñera was heard saying. The scandal derailed the businessman’s presidential campaign. The person ultimately responsible for the phone spying was an Army captain. And Matthei was the one who obtained the tape and gave it to a television station, even though she said for two months that she knew nothing of the recording’s existence before it was released. The deputy apologized to Piñera, her former teacher, former employer at the investment company Bancard and friend. He renounced Renovación Nacional and his presidential ambitions. Since there is sometimes no room for grudges in politics, Matthei was Minister of Labor in the first government of Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014).
Evelyn Rose Matthei Fornet (69 years old, Santiago) is a racist, demanding and frontal politician. Also spontaneous. Before she came to power, she was rather shy and friendly, she said. But the macho environment changed her. “If these guys aren’t afraid of me, they’ll keep running me over. I learned to be annoying,” she said on the show Pero con Respect, “and now it’s second nature to me,” she added with a laugh. Her character has sometimes earned her the pseudonym “Iron Lady.” But the way she defends her positions with claws, it’s not uncommon for her to play a joke.
For example, when Shakira released her song with Bizarrap, the current mayor of the municipality of Providencia, a traditional neighborhood in the eastern part of Santiago, published a photo in which she was wearing a blouse practically identical to the Colombian’s. “When I saw Shakira copying my blouse, I made piqué [chilenismo de enfadé]”, wrote. Mattheis, yes, she did it. Because it has. He is skilled with his hands, learned the piano – at one point he thought he would dedicate his life to it – and can spend hours gardening.
She is the daughter of the late General Fernando Matthei, who was a good friend of Air Force General Alberto Bachelet, Michelle Bachelet’s father. While both were members of the institution, they were assigned to Cerro Moreno Air Base in the north in the late 1950s. The two daughters of generals lived opposite each other. During the dictatorship, Fernando Matthei served as Pinochet’s health minister and then as aviation representative in the military junta. He was the first member of the regime to publicly acknowledge Pinochet’s defeat in the 1988 referendum. Evelyn Matthei then voted to keep the dictator in power. And when Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998, he protested in front of the embassies of England and Spain.
Evelyn Matthei doing the traditional Cueca dance in a picture from her social networks. Press Evelyn Matthei
After she left Renovación Nacional in the early 1990s, the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), which represented the hard right at the time, invited her into its ranks. His speech and some of his votes in Congress showed that he had a more liberal set of values - for divorce, the morning-after pill and abortion on three grounds. He warned them, as he said, that he would continue on this path and would not accept any pressure. Already in 1999, while still a senator, she began her activism in the UDI, a party that has bothered her more than once and which, as she revealed, she has no plans to leave.
The freedom and cunning with which she has played various political roles – deputy, senator, minister, mayor – has caused excitement but also sympathy in her sector. Now, backed by the support of citizens, she is preparing to become the candidate of the Chile Vamos coalition, the traditional right. It would be the second time he has appeared on the ballot, following a failed attempt in 2013 against socialist Michelle Bachelet, his neighbor as a child. On this occasion she was appointed four months before the elections after two UDI candidates dropped out of the race. In 2021, he again showed his interest in reaching La Moneda, but in a major blow, the party preferred to support Joaquín Lavín, another historic member of the party, who was later defeated in the coalition primaries.
The political scenario is different from the previous ones. The Republican Party of the hardest right, which says in its statement of guiding principles that it believes in God, in social justice and in the social market economy, is the first political force since it won 35% of the vote last May in the elections for the city councilors of the second constituent process. In addition, according to the Center for Public Studies (CEP) survey, it is the formation with which Chileans represent themselves the most (10%, while 60% do not identify with any party). The leader and founder of the community in 2019, José Antonio Kast, who lost to Gabriel Boric in the last presidential election, presents himself as a solid card with a strong speech on crime and immigration.
However, Kast’s popularity has declined (43%) as the project to replace the constitution, inherited from the dictatorship and reformed around 60 times, makes democratic progress and has even lost ground in polls on voting intentions in favor of Matthei. Although Kast never intended to amend the Basic Charter, he was forced to fully commit to the process – knowing full well that his party’s near-absolute dominance of the constituent body meant a test of its ability to govern before the citizens – in which he agreed to a number of measures described as “extreme” by the left and a key group in the center.
In the five months that the constitutional process was ongoing, Matthei had intervened only once to warn that he would not accept “any regression” on abortion for three reasons. An approved article that refers to the right to life of “the unborn” may endanger current legislation. This has been sharply questioned by the governing parties, who have been accused of a “backsliding in women’s rights” and even the government has broken its promise not to take part in the constitutional process this time, adding to the criticism. However, last week the mayor slammed the board. “If the process continues like this, I will not use my political capital to approve the constitution” and “What has already been drawn up is more like a government program than a constitution,” were some of his statements to El Mercurio and that they are on the right , which dominates the Constitutional Council, sound the alarm. Several analysts believed that the presidential race had officially begun.
Matthei has a team working on his future government program, which includes four axes: security, housing, health and climate change. In a CNN broadcast, he winked at the new center formations, especially the Amarillos – a movement that emerged from the flight of militants from the Christian Democracy and the Party for Democracy, once two pillars of the former Concertación – and expressed his intention to be a moderate to embody the project without neglecting the fundamentals of the right. When it comes to the question of what to do in view of the expansion of the toughest wing, Matthei is hunting for points. Regarding irregular immigrants who commit crimes, he said that “I would also deport them and their families,” and regarding threats from organized crime to the authorities, he said that “in these cases it may be necessary to report on the to speak of the death penalty.” ”
Asked if she would include Republicans if she became president, the mayor said she would “happily” say no. “But politics is practical, I don’t rule anything out,” he said, adding that it will depend on how Congress is positioned in the next general election, which would take place in November 2025, the same day as the presidential election.
Although there are some in the UDI who take it for granted that Matthei will be their representative on the ballot, she has not yet made her candidacy official, although she has given clear signals: “I am preparing for the responsibility that could come to me,” she told the newspaper La Tercera at the beginning of August. It would be the fourth time that he came up with the idea of reaching La Moneda: in 1992 – when he renounced the competition for the record contract –; in 2013, when he accepted the request at the last minute; in 2021, when her party eliminated her from the primaries; and those that are carried out in just under 14 months.