Who among the following became the 38th President of Chile ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (3), Jose Antonio Kast Rist. Kast, a lawyer and the leader of Chile's Republican Party, won the presidential run-off held in December 2025, defeating Jeannette Jara, and was sworn in at Valparaiso in March 2026 for the 2026-2030 term. He succeeded Gabriel Boric, whose single four-year term ran from 2022, and the numbering in the stem follows from that succession. The result was widely reported as the sharpest turn to the right in Chilean politics since the return of democracy, and Kast's platform was built on three promises he repeated in his inaugural address: tighter control of immigration, faster economic growth, and action against rising crime. His own political trajectory is part of what made the result notable — he had contested the previous presidential election and lost the 2021 run-off to Boric, so the 2025 contest reversed an earlier defeat. The question is a straightforward recall item with no reasoning route: either the name is in your current-affairs notes or it is not. What makes it answerable for a prepared candidate is that the other three options are all former Presidents of Chile from earlier periods, so the question really asks whether you can place the most recent transfer of power. If you know that Boric held office until March 2026, option (1) is out; if you know that Pinera and Lagos belong to earlier decades, options (2) and (4) go with it, and only option (3) can be the new incumbent.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Boric is Kast's immediate predecessor, not his successor. Elected at the end of 2021 and sworn in during 2022, he was the youngest person to hold the office and came to it from the student movement and the left-wing coalition that grew out of it. Chile does not permit consecutive re-election of a President, so Boric could not have followed himself; he handed over to Kast in March 2026. This is the option a candidate picks when the name of the outgoing President is the only Chilean name they know.  (b) Pinera, a businessman and centre-right politician, served two non-consecutive terms as President — 2010 to 2014, and 2018 to 2022, when he handed office to Boric. He died in a helicopter crash in February 2024, so he could not have taken office in 2026. The option is placed to catch a candidate who remembers Chile's earlier swing to the right and stops there.  (d) Lagos, a Socialist, was President of Chile from 2000 to 2006, in the long period of centre-left government that followed the return to democracy. He belongs to a generation of Chilean politics two decades before this question's events, and is included as a recognisable name for a candidate guessing from general familiarity rather than from current affairs.

Concept: Chile is a presidential republic on the western coast of South America, running some four thousand kilometres from the Atacama Desert in the north to Patagonia in the south, with the Andes forming its eastern boundary. Its President is directly elected and serves a four-year term without immediate re-election, which produces the pattern visible in this question's option list — Presidents returning after sitting out a term, as Pinera did. Where no candidate wins an absolute majority in the first round, the top two go to a run-off, which is how both the 2021 and the 2025 contests were decided. The capital is Santiago, but the National Congress sits at Valparaiso, which is why presidential inaugurations take place there.

State PCS 2026 Q87 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q87 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer