The leftist Gabriel Boric was sworn in yesterday as president of Chile in a ceremony without ties and with a majority of women in the new government, which anticipates a change of direction in a country shaken after the crisis of its social model.
“Before the people and peoples of Chile, yes, I promise,” said the former student leader when he took office in an unprecedented nod to the native peoples, who represent 13% of the country’s population. Cleaning the emotion from his voice, the new president expressed a “great sense of responsibility and duty to the people.”
At just 36 years old, Boric became the youngest president in Chilean history and the first that is not part of the two blocs that have governed the country since the return to democracy in 1990.
The new president of the Senate, the socialist Álvaro Elizalde, imposed the presidential sash on a tieless Boric, accompanied by his partner, Irina Karamanos.
(Also read: Gabriel Boric: who is the new president-elect of Chile?)
“We are going to give the best of ourselves to rise to the challenges we face,” the president said in brief statements to the media. upon leaving the Senate, located in the coastal city of Valparaíso, 150 kilometers east of Santiago. Later, he got into a convertible Ford Galaxie, driven by a Carabineros agent, in another unequivocal sign that feminism will be a central axis of his government, the first in the continent with more women than men.
In the car he was also accompanied by the new Minister of the Interior, Izkia Siches, the first woman in Chilean history to occupy the powerful portfolio.
The president got out of the car after walking a few meters to greet the people who were waiting for him outside the security perimeter and left for neighboring Viña del Mar to have lunch with the international delegations.
After lunch, he left for Santiago, where he rode the convertible through some central streets until he reached La Moneda, seat of the Executiveto deliver his first official speech as president.
“It is a change of citizen command, a historic day. We are in the midst of a constituent process and (this is) a government that proposes profound transformations, step by step, but profound,” stressed the new government spokesperson, Camila Vallejo.
Defender of the constituent process in which the country is immersed to bury the current Constitution, inherited from the dictatorship and of a neoliberal nature, Boric has promised a profound agenda of reforms to build a model similar to the European one.
Boric intends to start a path towards a welfare state in the style of European social democracy, to keep his word to turn Chile, where 1% of the population owns 26% of the wealth, into “the grave” of neoliberalism.
to the inauguration The presidents of Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Bolivia, King Felipe VI of Spain attended, former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and candidate Gustavo Petro. The United States sent its person in charge for small and medium-sized companies.
In addition to the international delegations, Boric extended personal invitations to a handful of national personalities, including Gustavo Gatica, the young man who went blind in the 2019 wave of protests and became a symbol of police violence. Nicaraguan writer Gioconda Belli, one of the main opponents of the Daniel Ortega regime, also attended the ceremony.
The Chilean Minister of Finance, Mario Marcel, announced his intention to make a first increase in the minimum wage in 2022, minutes after taking office and the progressive Gabriel Boric being sworn in as president. The election of Marcel, former president of the Central Bank and champion of fiscal consolidation, was a clear nod to the center by Boric.
(You may be interested in: What are the main challenges that Gabriel Boric has in Chile?)
Another challenge that the new president will have will be to gather support for the final part of the constitutional process that this year must call a plebiscite to approve or reject a new Constitution to replace the one inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship.
For experts, Boric’s government marks the beginning of a new political era, since the young president is the first president who is not part of the two large center blocs that have governed since the return to democracy in 1990 and is the leftist since Salvador Allende (1970-1973).
voting closed
The former student leader won the second round in December by more than 55.8 percent of the votes and almost 12 points difference, against the far-right José Antonio Kast.
The new president starts with a feminist government with 14 women and 10 men, in which the person who will have the most power within the first Cabinet is the independent Izkia Siches, the first woman to hold the position of Minister of the Interior in Chile.
The investiture ceremony took place at noon in the National Congress (10 am time in Colombia), located in the city of Valparaíso, with a strict health protocol and limited capacity due to the pandemic.
The event was attended by nearly 500 guests, compared to 1,300 in previous investitures, including 11 heads of state or government from around the world, among which the presidents Guillermo Lasso (Ecuador) and Luis Abinader (Dominican Republic) stood out; the King of Spain, Felipe VI, and the ruler of Paraguay, Mario Abdo, who stressed that the collaboration between the two countries has allowed “advance in a process of strategic integration.”
Likewise, the president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, who wished “comrade and brother Boric (…) the best of success and that his management be what the people need”, and the leaders of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle pou; Bolivia, Luis Arce; in addition to the Prime Ministers of Haiti, Ariel Henry, and Guyana, Mark Phillips, and the representative of the US Government, Isabella Casillas.
(In other news: Chile celebrates its first same-sex weddings)
One of the last tasks that Boric carried out before assuming power occurred this Thursday when he met with the outgoing Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera (who leaves power with 70% disapproval), to execute the traditional process of merging power.
Something that was extraordinary, and broke the protocols, was the conversation that the incoming president had with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Kiyoshi Odawara, who gave him a pokeball and a stuffed animal who, at just 36 years old, will be the youngest president of Chilean history.
EFE and AFP
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