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The second term of center-right Sebastián Piñera in Chile will come to an end in March. When the billionaire businessman assumed his second presidency, in 2018, from the hands of Michelle Bachelet, Chile was a very different country. The concerns at the time were stagnant economic growth, the fight for free education, and a nascent immigration problem. In this special program we analyze the legacy that Piñera leaves for a Chile that decided to change.
The outbreak of the revolt in October 2019, just a year and a half after assuming power, threw the aspirations of the Piñera government to the ground. The revolt became one of the most transformative events that Chile has experienced since the end of the dictatorship.
The entire country burned for months after thousands expressed a discontent contained for several decades calling for better education, health and pensions, among others. Only the pandemic and curfews helped the government control an outbreak that for months was totally uncontrollable. To this day the demands remain unsatisfied.
The challenges of the new president
The new president, Gabriel Boric, inherits a country with a high rate of vaccination and booster doses, in which Chile is at the forefront of the world and which has allowed it to resume economic activity. But the new occupant of La Moneda will have a complicated mission: to restore stability and public order, which is still experiencing the consequences of the outbreak and the pandemic and its economic costs, with high indebtedness and inflation rates.
Immigration will also be a challenge for the new government in the second country in the region with the highest percentage of migrants, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migrants, a figure that grew in 2021 with the constant flow of immigrants to the north.
The relationship with the Constitutional Convention, which is currently drafting a new Magna Carta whose objective would be to modify, among others, the mandates and powers of the president, will be another challenging point. A good part of the channeling of the discomforts expressed in the social revolt will depend on the success of this process.
Of course, analysts point out that the greatest challenge for the next president will be to carry out any type of legislative measure with a completely divided Congress and reach agreements to guarantee viability and avoid political vulnerabilities that could interrupt this new era of Chilean democracy.
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