Chile’s youngest prez vows to tackle poverty, inequality

A native of Punta Arenas, Boric as a student led the Federation of Students at the University of Chile in Santiago. He rose to prominence leading protests in 2011 demanding improved and cheaper education

The Leftist candidate Gabriel Boric, 35, who won Chile’s presidential election to become the country’s youngest ever leader, started out as a student leader in the country’s capital rallying against the privatised education system. A native of Punta Arenas, Boric as a student led the Federation of Students at the University of Chile in Santiago. He rose to prominence leading protests in 2011 demanding improved and cheaper education.

The Guardian writes about Boric, ‘He belongs to a radical generation of student leaders who are grimly determined to bury dictator Augusto Pinochet’s bitter legacy once and for all’. It reported that Boric shouted on the night of his primary win, “Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, and it shall also be its grave!” 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. In his victory speech, Boric said, “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.”

He highlighted the progressive positions that launched his improbable campaign, including a promise to fight climate change by blocking a proposed mining project in Chile, which is the world’s largest copper producer. He also promised to end Chile’s private pension system — the hallmark of the neoliberal economic model imposed by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. When he takes office in March Boric will be only the second millennial to lead in Latin America, after El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. Only one other head of state, Giacomo Simoncini of the city-state San Marino in Europe, is younger.

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