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the leftist Gabriel Boric will assume the presidency of Chile this Friday, in the most challenging change of command since the country regained democracy in 1990. And he will do so together with his colleagues from the student movement that in 2011 exposed the social shortcomings of a successful economic model.
With Camila Vallejo (33) and Giorgio Jackson (35)the spokeswoman for the new Executive and the minister in charge of relations with Parliament, respectively, were in 2011 the faces in their twenties who confronted the first government of Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014) to denounce unequal and expensive education, and demand that the State will guarantee free and quality.
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Boric’s government (36) marks the crowning of a generational change in Chilean politics which materialized in 2017 with the emergence of the left-wing Broad Front coalition and the entry into Congress of two of its leaders, borik and jacksonand also of the communist Vallejo.
The future president wanted to show from the appointment of his team the seal that he intends to give to his administration: a mostly female cabinet (14 of a total of 24 ministries), in which the average age is 42 years.
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“Today a new chapter in our democratic history begins to be written. We do not start from scratch, we know that there is a story that elevates and inspires us”said borik on January 21 last when announcing his cabinet.
For the first time a woman Izkia Siches (36), will head the Ministry of the Interiorin charge of public security, one of the issues that most worries Chileans, according to polls.
Among the twists and turns in a country where political and economic power has been controlled by an elite, he appointed Light Vidal (48)a former domestic worker and union member of that guild, as Vice Minister of Women and Gender Equity.
“borik It begins with a favorable climate of public opinion, thanks to all the political capital that he achieved in the elections and with the appointment of his cabinet”Marco Moreno, director of the government school at the Central University of Chile, told AFP.
“I am proud of what Chile has done, the citizens, the social mobilization, the organizations, what we have been working with Gabriel, with Giorgio, with Izkia and others and other colleagues from the feminist world and the social struggle”Vallejo said.
Weak support in Congress
The incoming government arrives with meager support in Parliament. Barely 37 deputies in a 120-seat chamber, and five senators out of a total of 50, will have the new official alliance made up of the Broad Front and the Communist Party.
It would also add the support of the Socialist Party, but it will not be enough to obtain a minimum majority in the Legislative.
If Boric’s youth raises hopes, the challenges are greater for a four-year administration in which his limited political experience finds distrust in the sectors of the radical right and leftand there are uncertainties about whether it will be able to deliver the social changes it promises.
“borik has the challenge of advancing in the management of the problems without destroying its government coalition, which is already under tension within it due to the different sensitivities that coexist in it”, Marcelo Mella, a political scientist at the University of Santiago de Chile, told AFP.
High voltage expectations
Another political challenge facing borik is that he can become the last president to take office under the 1980 Constitution, drafted during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), and be the first under the new Magna Carta that could emerge this year from the Constitutional Convention, a process that supports without hesitation.
The hope among the Chileans who supported the origin of the social outbreak of October 2019 focuses on laying the foundations for a stronger State that guarantees social rights in a country where 1% of the population owns 26% of the wealth.
borikin its promise to establish a European-style welfare state, faces three legacies from Piñera’s outgoing administration: a budget that cut public spending by 22.5%, an estimated slowdown in the economy by 2022, and inflation that in 2021 it closed at 7.2%.
Migration and indigenous struggle
Added to the list of “urgent” issues is the incessant arrival of immigrants across the porous border with Peru and Bolivia, and in the south a historic unresolved conflict with the Mapuche communities marked by repeated acts of violence and death.
Those issues, as well as public safety, are problems that have been dragging on for more than a decade, and now they’ve gotten worse.
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Source: Elcomercio
