Former protest leader turned president planning big changes
Left-leaning former student leader Gabriel Boric has been sworn in as Chile’s new president, vowing to oversee a political and economic renovation of a nation shaken by repeated massive protests over inequality in recent years despite a relatively vibrant economy.
At 36, Boric is the youngest president in Chile’s history. He was only 4 when democracy returned following a 17-year military dictatorship that both bloodied and set the groundwork for modern Chile.
Boric has vowed that his young, inclusive government will attack nagging poverty and inequality that he says are the unacceptable underbelly of a free-market model imposed decades ago by General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled from 1973 to 1990.
His four-year term begins at a moment when a constituent assembly is drawing up a new constitution for the country to replace one adopted under Pinochet.
Soon after being sworn in, Boric swore in the leader of what he has called a ‘‘feminist’’ cabinet, which includes 14 women and 10 men. He declined to wear a tie for the inauguration.
Boric won 56 per cent of the vote in a December runoff against conservative Jose Antonio Kast. While his election initially scared investors, causing drops in stock prices and the peso, he has since stressed a pragmatic streak, vowing to maintain fiscal responsibility, and naming a respected economist, former Central Bank president
Mario Marcel, as finance minister.
‘‘We are going to have to make the changes step by step because if not, the risk of falling back is too great,’’ he said recently – a stance that may be enforced by the fact his leftist coalition has only 37 of the 155 seats in congress. Even adding other centre-left parties, his allies fall just short of a majority.
Chile has long been seen as one of Latin America’s greatest economic success stories, bolstered in part by its vast mineral industries. But it has been rocked over the past decade by repeated large protest movements – some led by Boric – demanding better education, pensions and health care, as well as a more egalitarian distribution of wealth.
Boric takes office as well at a moment when large-scale immigration from Venezuela and other countries has caused unrest in northern Chile, while violent protests by Indigenous rights activists demanding historic territories have caused clashes in the south.
It is also a moment of international turmoil due to fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine.
Boric has called for greater taxes on the wealthy to help finance improved health care, education, and a universal pension plan to replace a privately run system that has proven inadequate for many Chileans. He has also pushed for a higher minimum wage and the creation of more jobs for women, in particular. He also campaigned for greater environmental protections in a country famed for its enormous copper mines.