Gabriel Boric is Chile’s youngest president

Gabriel Boric. Pic/AP

Former leftist student leader Gabriel Boric will be under quick pressure from his youthful supporters to fulfill his promises to remake Chile after the millennial politician scored a historic victory in the country's presidential runoff election.

Boric spent months traversing up and down Chile vowing to bring a youth-led form of inclusive government to attack nagging poverty and inequality that he said are the unacceptable underbelly of a free market model imposed decades ago by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The bold promise paid off. With 56 per cent of the votes, Boric on Sunday handily defeated his opponent, far right lawmaker Jose Antonio Kast, by more than 10 points and at age 35 was elected Chile's youngest modern president.

Amid a crush of supporters in downtown Santiago, Boric vaulted atop a metal barricade to reach the stage where he initiated in the indigenous Mapuche language a rousing victory speech to thousands of mostly young people. "We are a generation that emerged in public life demanding our rights be respected as rights and not treated like consumer goods or a business," Boric said. "We know there continues to be justice for the rich, and justice for the poor, and we no longer will permit that the poor keep paying the price of Chile's inequality."

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