Marco Enríquez-Ominami said President José Antonio Kast would win again if a presidential election were held today. The five-time candidate for La Moneda, Chile's presidential palace, made the remark in an interview with The Clinic published on Thursday, October 22.
"If I put a ballot box in Chile today, José Antonio Kast wins the election again", he said. According to BioBioChile, the former candidate attributed the left's difficulties to its own political and communication mistakes.
For Enríquez-Ominami, the problem is not the quality of his opponents. "It's not that the right is better than us: we are in very bad shape, which is completely different", he said. In his view, the progressive camp is failing to connect its proposals with the public's concerns.
The right, by contrast, put forward simple, recognizable messages. The former candidate gave an example from the 2025 campaign. Kast, he said, "had nothing on security, but he had an idea, an image: a trench". He also called him "an undisputed, legitimate winner".
His harshest criticism was aimed at those who did not run in the 2025 presidential election, especially former President Michelle Bachelet. "Why did they announce a candidacy now? Why wasn't she a candidate in 2025? The worst moment in the center-left's history happened last year", he said.
Enríquez-Ominami acknowledged his own responsibility for the defeat. "I wasn't enough, but the governing coalition's candidate wasn't enough either", he said. He added that he misses the people who "stayed out of the previous process, because it was the hardest battle".
He was also blunt about his sector's leadership. "I think Chile's progressive leadership is very dishonest. Very dishonest", he said. So far, the sources do not record any response from opposition parties or from Bachelet's circle.
Asked about a possible sixth bid, he ruled out running for the Presidency again for now. "My priority today is just one: to engage differently with current affairs, with proposals, and to train people", he explained.
The remarks coincide with the launch of his book "Espejo para príncipes: una guía de comunicación política para asesores, candidatos y votantes" (Mirror for princes: a political communication guide for advisers, candidates and voters). He co-wrote it with anthropologist Daniel Flores Cáceres, and its 164 pages cover leadership, advisers, electoral narratives and the effect of social media.
In the interview, the author summed up the book's central thesis: "one supports what one knows, and one knows what is repeated". He recalled his time on Ricardo Lagos's advertising team in 1999, when, he said, that campaign team mocked Joaquín Lavín for always repeating the same thing.
The book will be presented this Thursday, October 22, at 18:30 at the Librería del Fondo Gonzalo Rojas bookstore, Paseo Bulnes 152, in downtown Santiago. It will be discussed by analysts Patricio Navia and Daniel Mansuy, along with former Peruvian presidential candidate Roberto Sánchez, moderated by Deputy Consuelo Veloso.
