An Incompetent President: Struggling to Lead Amid National Crises

Original article: Un Presidente incapaz de habitar el cargo e inepto ante las crisis

By Gustavo Lorca, Attorney

It is clear that the global landscape is unstable, and our country is deeply entrenched in this reality, caught in a complex crossroads with a President who demonstrates, day after day, a lack of rigor, empathy, and talent to adapt and address the problems plaguing the nation.

A President, as Carlos Peña noted, who is very domestic in his approach.

This inadequacy and lack of skill for the role are evident not only in administrative errors and mismanagement but also in the appointments of many of his closest collaborators, which have resulted in a situation where our country and economy are now indeed in crisis, with zero growth and a more than 29% drop in capital goods purchases in October 2026, a national unemployment rate averaging 9.8%, and exceeding 10% in major regions.

With poorly designed constitutional reform projects and laws, alongside the constant departures of key officials like ministers, undersecretaries, and regional directors for various, often undisclosed reasons occurring every four days, this indicates a significant lack of rigor in their selection, with some ministers failing to grasp basic principles of political communication, leading to an increasingly prevalent sentiment of ungovernability and ineffectiveness of the state to resolve pressing issues, leaving citizens more pessimistic.

We have a President who, inexplicably, continues to support Justice Minister Fernando Rabat, who has approved administrative requests for reduced sentences for child abusers, drug traffickers, and human rights violators, despite broad political consensus on the need to replace him, sustained only by President Kast’s stubbornness.

Apparently, he believes he must exercise power and fulfill his citizen mandate based on the ethics of conviction rather than the accountability that is demanded of a professional politician, in line with Max Weber’s principles.

In this context, we see a President giving a poor representation at the United Nations, damaging the country’s image by repeating campaign phrases that are unworthy of the highest authority in the nation.

«After winter, spring always arrives. And after years of stagnation, Chile is back,» for instance, or his appeal «to those listening from the investment world, I say: choose Chile for investment. You will find stable rules, functioning courts, contracts that are honored, and a state eager to facilitate investment».

As if such statements could magically resolve a far deeper issue than mere tax reductions.

This superficiality in the exercise of office has inflicted severe damage on the country, affecting the Central Bank’s growth projections, which for December 2025 predicted a 2.5% growth for 2026, but now, being optimistic, is projected to be 0%.

In light of this disaster, Minister Quiroz himself has acknowledged a Technical Recession without any international economic crisis.

Returning to the President’s participation in the United Nations, the brilliant idea to read in English created a cringe-worthy scene; it seems no advisor was able to convince him it was a bad idea and would only serve to worsen his already poor presidential image and, importantly, the country’s image.

In terms of international relations, both with neighboring countries and with the Trump administration in the U.S., he has exhibited concerning ineptitude and weakness alongside Foreign Minister Pérez Mackenna.

He has allowed Milei and several Argentine officials to question Chile’s sovereignty over the Strait of Magellan, to voice opinions on our internal politics, and to refer to our homegrown center-left politicians in the most disparaging manner without facing any consequences.

Or for the U.S. ambassador to suggest, out of ignorance, that two of our state ministers should study, indicating that the President (and the Foreign Minister he appointed) demonstrates a lack of leadership and accountability in defending national interests that is unworthy of a Head of State, undermining the dignity of the country.

Domestically, the President has disappointed his supporters, the very citizens who placed their trust in him, who, on the day of his victory in December, were euphoric and hopeful that Chile was on a better path, believing ‘now we finally have a leader who knows what to do’.

These are the same citizens whose expectations generated by candidate Kast he has failed to meet.

As of today, we witness a collapse of his image, leadership, and all that led him to La Moneda and earned the support of that distant 58%. To be fair, these expectations were similarly disappointed by candidate Boric, leading to the presidency of Boric. From this perspective, both share more similarities than differences.

The issue at hand is that the presidential figure has dangerously weakened in a system that, paradoxically, is intensely presidential and lacks institutional mechanisms for correction.

The icing on the cake: a President from that “brave” right has achieved the impossible, a national strike by a guild of truck drivers, both large and small, who overwhelmingly trusted him and now threaten the national logistics chain and paralyze several essential services for our economy.

We are in a momentum where campaign phrases or empty calls to invest and hire workers, like those made at Enade, have no practical effect, making us view the recovery of employment, growth of economic activity, and improvement of living conditions for our citizens with pessimism.

Finally, when the President insists, repetitively, that «everything will be fine», we can only conclude, alongside the irritation and anger this phrase provokes, that we have a person unfit for the position of President of the Republic, incapable of embodying the office, without a plan and lacking the character expected of such a role.

«Everything will be fine»… It is reasonable to expect the Head of State to mark the course of his administration and the nation’s destiny because, elected with a 58% electoral support from citizens, a majority of whom are disappointed and no longer trust him, all polls and hard data show that at this rate, «nothing will be fine».

Gustavo Lorca, Attorney