Jose Antonio Kast sworn in as Chile’s President

• Far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast was sworn in as Chile’s President on March 11.

• Kast, 60, defeated Jeannette Jara, a communist from Boric’s coalition, in December's run-off to clinch the presidency on his third attempt.

• Kast takes over from left-wing President Gabriel Boric, to whom he lost the 2021 election.

• The transfer of power ceremony was held in the coastal city of Valparaiso, where Congress is located.

• It marks the Latin American nation’s most pronounced shift to the right since the return of democracy in 1990.

• Born in Santiago, Kast has been a politician for 30 years.

• He broke from Chile’s mainstream conservative party in 2016 to found the more radical Republican Party.

• Before taking office Kast resigned from the Republican Party, which he founded in 2019 — a symbolic gesture often undertaken by Chilean Presidents to project independence of party politics.

• Several leaders from across the region attended his inauguration, including Argentina’s Javier Milei, Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa and Paraguay’s Santiago Pena, as well as Spain’s King Felipe.

• Kast gives US President Donald Trump another ally in Latin America.

• Kast was among 12 Latin American leaders who attended Trump’s ‘Shield of the Americas’ summit in Florida earlier in February.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Kast and said he was looking forward to working closely with him to further strengthen bilateral ties.

• Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh represented the Indian government at the inauguration ceremony of the new President.