Monday, December 20, 2021

Progressive Gabriel Boric elected president of Chile, vows unity and democracy

By UPI Staff

President-elect Gabriel Boric speaks to supporters in Santiago, Chile, on Sunday. 
Photo by Elvis Gonzalez/EPA-EFE

Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Chile has elected its youngest president in modern history -- a 35-year-old former student activist who has promised to lead a progressive charge away from decades of rule by dictator Augusto Pinochet and conservative Sebastian Pinera.

Gabriel Boric was declared the winner of the presidential runoff election on Sunday, winning about 56% of the vote over far-right lawmaker Jose Antonio Kast. He will be sworn in on March 11.

Kast won the first round of voting last month by 2 percentage points.

Boric has vowed to unite Chile, tackle poverty and inequality and fight elitism.

"I know that the future of our country will be at stake next year," he said according to The Guardian.

"I will be a president who will take care of democracy and not jeopardize it, a president who listens more than he speaks, who seeks unity, who looks after people's daily needs, and who fights hard against the privileges of the few and who works every day for Chilean families."

Boric also pledged to fight the climate crisis and block a proposed mining project in the world's largest copper-producing nation. He also called for an end to Chile's private pension system.

Boric will succeed Pinera, who in 2018 became the first conservative leader to be elected since the controversial Pinochet left office in 1990.

Leftist millennial vows to remake Chile after historic win

By PATRICIA LUNA and JOSHUA GOODMAN

1 of 19
Chile's President elect Gabriel Boric, of the "I approve Dignity" coalition, celebrates his victory in the presidential run-off election in Santiago, Chile, Sunday, Dec. 19, 2021.
 (AP Photo/Luis Hidalgo)


SANTIAGO, Chile (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 Chile, vowing to bring a youth-led 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% of the votes, Boric on Sunday handily defeated his opponent, far right lawmaker José Antonio Kast, 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 used the indigenous Mapuche language to initiate a victory speech to thousands of mostly young supporters.

“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.”

In his speech, the bearded, bespectacled president-elect highlighted the progressive positions that launched his improbable campaign, including a promise to fight climate change by blocking a proposed mining project in the world’s largest copper producing nation.

He also called for an end to Chile’s private pension system — the hallmark of the neoliberal economic model imposed by Pinochet.


It’s an ambitious agenda made more challenging by a gridlocked congress and ideological divisions recalling the ghosts of Chile’s past that came to the fore during the bruising campaign.

Kast, who has a history of defending Chile’s past military dictatorship, finished ahead of Boric by two percentage points in the first round of voting last month. But his attempt to portray his rival as a puppet of his Communist Party allies who would upend Latin America’s most stable, advanced economy fell flat in the head-to-head runoff

Still, in a model of democratic civility that broke from the polarizing rhetoric of the campaign, Kast immediately conceded defeat, tweeting a photo of himself on the phone congratulating his opponent on his “grand triumph.” He then later traveled personally to Boric’s campaign headquarters to meet with his rival.

And outgoing President Sebastian Pinera, a conservative billionaire, held a video conference with Boric to offer his government’s full support during the three-month transition. That will follow a runoff that saw 1.2 million more Chileans cast ballots than in the first round and raise turnout to nearly 56%, the highest since voting stopped being mandatory in 2012.

“It’s impossible not to be impressed by the historic turnout, the willingness of Kast to concede and congratulate his opponent even before final results were in, and the generous words of President Pinera,” said Cynthia Arnson, head of the Latin America program at the Wilson Center in Washington. “Chilean democracy won today, for sure.”


In Santiago’s subway, where a fare hike in 2019 triggered a wave of nationwide protests that exposed the shortcomings of Chile’s free market model, young supporters of Boric waved flags emblazoned with the candidate’s name while jumping and shouting as they headed downtown for his victory speech.

“This is a historic day,” said Boris Soto, a teacher. “We’ve defeated not only fascism, and the right wing, but also fear.”


Boric will become Chile’s youngest modern president when he takes office in March and 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.

The new government is likely to be closely watched throughout Latin America, where Chile has long been a harbinger of regional trends.

It was the first country in Latin America to break with U.S. dominance during the Cold War and pursue socialism with the election of Salvador Allende in 1970. It then reversed course a few years later when Pinochet’s coup ushered in a period of right-wing military rule that quickly launched a free market experiment throughout the region.


Boric’s goal is to introduce a European-style social democracy that would expand economic and political rights to attack nagging inequality without veering toward the authoritarianism embraced by so much of the left in Latin America, from Cuba to Venezuela. It’s a task made more urgent by the coronavirus pandemic, which sped up the reversal of a decade of economic gains.

Boric was able to prevail by expanding beyond his base in the capital, Santiago, and attracting voters in rural areas. For example, in the northern region of Antofagasta, where he finished third in the first round of voting, he trounced Kast by almost 20 points.

Also key to his victory were Chilean women, a key voting bloc who feared that a Kast victory would roll back years of steady gains. Kast, 55, a devout Roman Catholic and father of nine, has a long record of attacking Chile’s LGBTQ community and advocating more restrictive abortion laws.

Boric, in his victory speech, promised that Chile’s women will be “protagonists” in a government that seeks to “leave behind once and for all the patriarchal inheritance of our society.”

___

Joshua Goodman reported from Miami.

Gabriel Boric vows to ‘fight privileges of the few’ as Chile’s premier

Leftist former student has vowed to unite country and tackle poverty and inequality




01:40 Leftwing millennial to be Chile's new president – video


John Bartlett in Santiago and Sam Jones
Mon 20 Dec 2021

Gabriel Boric has vowed to unite Chile, fight “the privileges of the few” and tackle poverty and inequality after winning a decisive victory over his far-right opponent to become the South American country’s youngest premier.

The 35-year-old leftist former student leader won 56% of the vote in Sunday’s second-round presidential election, cruising past his ultra-conservative opponent, José Antonio Kast, who took 44.2%.

The president-elect, who will be sworn in on 11 March, said the time had come for a radical overhaul of Chilean society and its economy.

“Men and women of Chile, I accept this mandate humbly and with a tremendous sense of responsibility because we are standing on the shoulders of giants,” he said in front of a vast crowd packed into a Santiago boulevard.

“I know that the future of our country will be at stake next year. That is why I want to promise you that I will be a president who will take care of democracy and not jeopardise it, a president who listens more than he speaks, who seeks unity, who looks after people’s daily needs, and who fights hard against the privileges of the few and who works every day for Chilean families.”

Boric said his generation wanted to have its rights respected and not be treated “like consumer goods or a business”, adding the country would no longer allow Chile’s poor to “keep paying the price” of inequality.

He added: “The times ahead will not be easy … Only with social cohesion, re-finding ourselves and sharing common ground will we be able to advance towards truly sustainable development – which reaches every Chilean.”

The new premier said he would be “the president of all Chileans … and serve everyone”.

Boric also highlighted the progressive positions that launched his improbable campaign, including a promise to fight the climate crisis by blocking a proposed mining project in what is the world’s largest copper-producing nation.

He also called for an end to Chile’s private pension system – the hallmark of the neoliberal economic model imposed by Gen Augusto Pinochet.

Boric thanked each candidate in turn – including Kast – and reinforced his commitment to Chile’s constitutional process, a key consideration for many as the country embarks upon this latest chapter in a turbulent period of transition.

The new administration is likely to be closely watched throughout Latin America, where Chile has long been a harbinger of regional trends.

It was the first country in South or Central America to break with US dominance during the cold war and pursue socialism with the election of Salvador Allende in 1970. It then reversed course three years later when Pinochet’s coup ushered in a period of rightwing military rule that quickly launched a free market experiment throughout the region.

Kast won the first round vote on 21 November by two percentage points, but Boric was able to prevail on Sunday by expanding beyond his base in Santiago and attracting voters in rural areas. In the northern region of Antofagasta, where he finished third in the first round of voting, Boric trounced Kast by almost 20 points.

Ghosts and old divisions returned to haunt the bitterly fought campaign, during which Kast – who has a history of defending the military dictatorship – sought unsuccessfully to caricature his rival as a puppet of his Communist party allies who would upend Latin America’s most stable, advanced economy.

However, Kast proved unexpectedly magnanimous in defeat. After tweeting a photo of himself congratulating his opponent on his “grand triumph”, he visited Boric’s campaign headquarters to see the new president. Kast, a father of nine, also said: “Gabriel Boric can count on us.”

Chile’s outgoing president, the conservative billionaire Sebastián Piñera, held a video conference with Boric to offer his government’s full support during the three-month transition.

In Santiago’s subway, where a fare rise in 2019 triggered a wave of nationwide protests that exposed the shortcomings of Chile’s free market model, young supporters of Boric waved flags emblazoned with the candidate’s name while jumping and shouting as they headed downtown for his victory speech.

“This is a historic day,” said Boris Soto, a teacher. “We’ve defeated not only fascism, and the right wing, but also fear.”

On a sweltering day in Chile, voting was marred by public transport difficulties across the country, although the government claimed it had done everything in its power to guarantee voters could reach polling stations.

Turnout for the vote – in which 1.2 million more people cast their ballots than in the first round – was nearly 56%, the highest level since voting ceased to be mandatory nine years ago.

Boric will become Chile’s youngest modern president when he takes office, and 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.

“It’s impossible not to be impressed by the historic turnout, the willingness of Kast to concede and congratulate his opponent even before final results were in, and the generous words of President Piñera,” said Cynthia Arnson, the head of the Latin America programme at the Wilson Center in Washington.

“Chilean democracy won today, for sure.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Who is Gabriel Boric? The radical student leader who will be Chile’s next president

Boric comes from a cohort that is grimly determined to bury dictator Augusto Pinochet’s bitter legacy once and for all


Gabriel Boric reacts before giving a speech to his supporters 
after the presidential runoff election in Santiago, Chile 
Photograph: Marcelo Hernández/Getty Images

John Bartlett in Santiago
Mon 20 Dec 2021 

Four months ago, 35-year-old Gabriel Boric confounded the polls to claim victory in a presidential primary he had barely been old enough to compete in. But on 11 March next year, he will now be sworn in as Chile’s youngest ever president – having amassed more votes than any presidential candidate in history.

Boric is the driving force behind Chile’s abrupt changing of the guard. 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.

“Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, and it shall also be its grave!” he shouted from a stage the night of his primary win, his forearm tattoo peeking out from beneath a rolled-up sleeve.

General Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship bestowed Chile with its extreme economic model, and Boric and his influential cohort of student leaders have taken it upon themselves to dispose of it.

“I know that history doesn’t begin with us,” he declared on stage on Sunday night as president-elect before a baying crowd.

“I feel like an inheritor of the long trajectory of those who, from different places, have tirelessly sought social justice.

Boric was born in Punta Arenas in 1986 and is fiercely proud of his home region, Magallanes, below the Patagonian ice fields.

In 2011, as he entered the final year of his law degree, Boric became a leader of education protests across the country, in which thousands of students took over their campuses and faculties across a long, cold winter, spilling out into the streets to demand free, high-quality education for all.

The protests were quelled with a modest compromise, allowing some students to study for free. Several of the movement’s young leaders later ran for office and joined the country’s congress or took up positions in local government.

Boric never completed his degree, instead winning election to Chile’s congress in 2013 and serving two terms as a deputy, becoming one of the first congresspeople to come from beyond Chile’s two traditional coalitions in the process.

But since narrowly losing the presidential first round to José Antonio Kast, a far-right supporter of General Pinochet, he has moderated his programme markedly, appealing to the centrist voters who have now propelled him into La Moneda.

Unlike his firebrand days at the front of the marches, Boric is now neatly groomed, humble and serious – while he often wears a smart blazer covering his tattoos. His girlfriend Irina Karamanos joined him on stage on Sunday night after the results.

He has pledged to decentralise Chile, implement a welfare state, increase public spending and include women, non-binary Chileans and Indigenous peoples like never before. But it is Boric’s ultimate goal of extricating the country from the binds of Pinochet’s dictatorship that will define his legacy.

The next four years will see this process begin, as the 2011 student generation led by Boric, take on an even more important role than before.

Chilean election offers stark choice: 
a leftist or an admirer of Pinochet

The campaign has resurfaced deep divisions and revived bitter memories of the country’s recent past


Gabriel Boric told supporters ‘we will come together again to defeat Pinochetismo.’ Photograph: Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters


John Bartlett in Santiago
Sun 19 Dec 2021 

Chilean voters headed to the polls on Sunday to chose between two presidential candidates offering starkly contrasting visions for the future, in the country’s most divisive elections since it returned to democracy in 1990.

Leftwing candidate Gabriel Boric, a tattooed former student protest leader, has pledged to empower women and Indigenous people and raise taxes and spending in order to create a fairer Chile.

His far-right opponent José Antonio Kast is a staunch defender of the former dictator Augusto Pinochet and has promised to dig ditches along the country’s northern border to slow migrants.

After years of centrist rule, the sharp choice has resurfaced deep divisions in one of Latin America’s most stable democracies, and revived bitter memories of the country’s recent past.

Conservative Chileans are convinced that Boric is a crypto-Communist who would push Chile into a Venezuelan-style economic tailspin. Progressives fear that Kast would overturn fragile social gains and clash with the mostly progressive convention that is rewriting the country’s dictatorship-era constitution.

Both candidates claim that it is their rival who instils fear among voters.


‘Very worrying’: is a far-right radical about to take over in Chile?


“This Sunday we are going to say ‘no’ to intolerant people,” said Kast – who frequently rails against the supposed influence of the “gay lobby” – at his final campaign rally on Thursday. “We will defeat fear… We will win by a wide margin because this is what I have been hearing the length of Chile.”

Across town, Boric told his supporters: “We are a generation that learns from those who were here before us; we united to defeat the dictatorship, to democratise Chile, [and] to have a new constitution. And now we will come together again to defeat the heir to this government and Pinochetismo – and bring hope to Chile.”

“I’m putting my faith in young people,” said Boric voter Cecilia Galaz, 67, as she strode into her polling station in a central neighbourhood in the capital, Santiago.

“We are handing over a corrupt, self-centred world, so we need to change absolutely everything if we are to keep advancing towards the sort of society we want to live in.”

Close by, 37-year-old Fernanda Medina walked out of the polling station having also cast her vote in favour of Boric.

“I’m really excited,” she said brightly, clasping her young daughter’s hand.

“But I fear that disinformation is powerful in rural Chile, and some people are inclined to vote in line with the emotions Kast plays on rather than inform themselves of the candidates’ policies.”

In rural parts of the country, as well as peripheral districts of Santiago, some voters complained of a lack of public transport to take them to polling stations.

Videos circulating on social media showed long lines at bus stops – in bright sunshine and temperatures rising above 30C (86F) – as well as depots full of parked buses.

Transport minister Gloria Hutt gave a televised address to “categorically deny” that the government was holding back the buses. She also said that public transport was running “somewhat better” than on a working day.

Some Chileans have begun offering carpool solutions to neighbours in the hope of allowing everyone the chance to vote.

Acknowledging that the election will be won with the votes of those in the centre, both candidates moderated their platforms in the weeks since the first round.

Kast is backed by the right-leaning candidates whom he defeated in the first round, while Boric has has support from across the left, from the Communist party to moderate former president Michelle Bachelet, who this week said Chileans faced a “fundamental” choice, urging them to back a leader who could lead the country “down the path of progress for all”.

Kast’s policies resonated with voters unnerved by two years of social protests and recent debates about abortion (which remains illegal in most instances) and migration.

But his relationship with Chile’s past has loomed darkly over his campaign.

Kast, whose Germany-born father was recently revealed to have been a member of the Nazi party, has previously said that Pinochet would have voted for him and campaigned prominently against the transition to democracy in the late 1980s.

Boric, on the other hand, represents the progressive generation brought up in democracy – many of whom harbour a visceral hatred of General Pinochet and his enduring legacy.

A reminder of that history came on Thursday when the death of the dictator’s widow, Lucia Hiriart, brought hundreds of people to a Santiago plaza – some of them bearing photos of victims of the military regime.

“This has unexpectedly turned into one of the most closely-fought elections,” Mireya García told Reuters.

García’s brother was one of thousands forcibly disappeared after the army toppled the democratically elected president Salvador Allende in 1973.

“What is at stake is that on the one hand the extreme right is clearly a danger for Chile and on the other hand, there is a candidate who represents the youth,” she said.

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