The story behind the Republican Party

five seats. This was their expectation for the May 7 election, according to the Republican Party’s campaign manager, Martin Araujo. The overall result was 23 seats, with 3,470,855 votes, becoming the first majority for the drafting of the new constitution.

Martin Arau assured that the key was that “We knew this would be a campaign with very little interest. So, we had to simplify and unify the messaging as much as possible. We didn’t even notice it on the Republicans, but only on ‘Ray’, how little interest people had.

To this lack of interest, he says, “added Unknown candidates, so we couldn’t focus there, we didn’t have to campaign for the candidates, but to unify the message, all with the same graph and similar activities”.

last Sunday’s victory meant the Republican Party From getting 10% votes to 35% in 2021 elections. But at the same time, he says, it raised one final problem: “We have 23 people with almost five years of electoral disability,” the ex-conservatives say.

An example of this is the councilor for the Los Lagos region, Beatriz Hevia—the first national majority—who, according to Araujo, “was a candidate who had projections to run for deputy, but who chose to go as a councilor.” let agreed.”

Hevia features profiles of most of the Republican Party’s elected advisors: He is young – he is 30 years old and the average age of the people selected is 44 years – And he began working with Chile Vamos as an advisor to the Undersecretary of the Economy in the second government of Sebastián Piñera.

According to Javier Macaya, president of the UDI, in zero tolerance last sunday, “90% of elected Republicans come from UDI.”

It extends to a large part of the community. In fact, the main leaders of the Republican Party are former members of the Chilean Vamos parties: Jose Antonio Cast (UDI), Rojo Edwards (RN), Arturo Squella (UDI) and Javier Leturia Marmod (UDI). All of them are important in the organic structure of the party mainly because of their political experience.

Martin Arau, a former UDI militant – he was elected at the convention by that party – states that “If you look at the declaration of principles of the UDI and the Republicans, they are very similar, but the difference is in the emphasis or importance given to the principles. are given, for example, if they can be traded or not”.

Capturing militants from Chile let’s go and on the radio

“The story of the Republican Party is the story of a successful SME.” That’s how Congressman Luis Sanchez defined the store he helped found.

It turns out that, before being a party, José Antonio Casta formed the Republican Action Movement. “It started very small, an office in Santiago where we could fit five people at most,” says Deputy Sanchez.

At the same time, With the help of Senator Rojo Edwards, Republican Ideas was formed, a think tank whose mission was to provide material to the movement. Today, the study center is headed by Cristian Valenzuela, Cast’s main right-hand man.

Earlier, when he left the UDI, Casta took with him several militants of the party founded by Jaime Guzmán. Sanchez states that he is one of them: “I met Jose Antonio when he was on the national board of UDI Youth. He was a delegate and supported a voluntary work project in his district. There was also Juan Irrazabal (current Republican deputy). So, when he decided to leave UDI, I followed his path because I thought he was the most powerful leader.”

From that point on, José Antonio Casta always intended to form his own political movement. Last year, he visited all the routes of Transantiago: “The idea was to talk to people, to find out their complaints. The focus has always been on worrying about social emergencies, today those emergencies are insecurity, immigration and the economy. As a party we managed to see it from the beginning And it reflected in Sunday’s win.”

At the time, a challenge for the José Antonio cast was to gain media presence. It was then that he met the now deputy Gonzalo de la Carrera, who had abandoned his militancy in the Republican Party.

according to deputy “At the beginning of the Piñera government I was a member of Evopoli. But Felipe Casta preferred to go to Checho’s (Sergio Hirane) program on Radio Agriculture, which was strange, because he was a member of my party. There I started inviting José Antonio and we became good friends, because the funny thing was that we were beating Checho’s program in the ratings.

From that point on, says de la Carrera, “they started inviting me to Ascion Republican meetings. At that point the discussion was about whether or not to form a political party.

Although today he is not a member of the community, Gonzalo de la Carrera says that “I opened the door for most of the people who are deputized today so that they can start to reveal themselves And now also for Councilor Antonio Barchisi ”.

In addition, the deputy said that “later we would meet every day to define strategies to obtain the signature at the house of Javier Leturria, which had a very high price. And we gradually set objectives so that José Antonio cast Be able to become a presidential candidate, because for this we had to be organized in all areas.

A Republican Party opposed to the government and constitutional process

Initially, the Republican Party was formed in the constituencies of O’Higgins, Maule and Newble, with which it became one party on 23 January. Then, in September of that year, they were formed in the regions of Coquimbo, Valparaiso, Biobío, La Araucania, Los Lagos and Metropolitan. Therefore, the main challenge was to establish itself in the northern regions of the country and the regions in the extreme south.

To date, they have 21,149 militants—more than Evopoli—and Its strongest regions are, in order, Metropolitan, Valparaiso, Biobio, Maule, Araucanía, Los Lagos, O’Higgins, Coquimbo and Nuble.

In La Araucania, the greatest difficulty was in taking positions away from Chile Vamos. For him, The cast turned to the leaders of the region. One of them was the current deputy, Gloria Navalon, a UDI militant and APRA leader.

“I met him when he invited a victim of violence in La Araucania to the Chamber to interrogate the interior minister at the time. We had some meetings for”, says the deputy.

At that point, Nevillon decided to leave UDI: “I think the Republicans have many former UDI extremists because we saw the possibility of doing politics in a different way, with more opinion and participation.,

In any case, Navilan dropped his militancy when he announced his vote in favor of a sixth AFP return: “There, they were very childish with me, because they did things like not letting me have lunch with them. punished. And after the victory of rejection I resigned from the party, before that we had to show unity”.

in good part, The exodus of militants from Chile to the Republican Party was key to last Sunday’s victoryAs they were taking the voters away.

With this there is an appeal to the youth. “There are many young people who are rebellious and prefer to be told what they think. We say what we think, regardless of the consequences.” Martin explains the strategy to Arau.

Jose Francisco Lagos, executive director of the Instituto Res Publica, explains that “The Republican Party was better able to identify with its opposition to both the government and the constitutional process.”

In this situation, adds Lagos, “not only does he manage to attract followers from the UDI, but also from other peoples of the Chilean Vamos. The exodus of people from the UDI to the Republicans probably occurs in terms of similarity in the field of principles.And the contingent decisions that separated the groups mean that moving from one party to another is not ‘costly’ in theory but only in the practical sphere.