Monday, December 20, 2021

• The former student activist only just met the required minimum age to run in the presidential race, seven years after being elected to his first political job as a member of Chile’s Chamber of Deputies.
• The former student activist only just met the required minimum age to run in the presidential race, seven years after being elected to his first political job as a member of Chile’s Chamber of Deputies.

Show plans Leftist lawmaker Gabriel Boric, 35, on Sunday became Chile’s youngest-ever president on promises of installing a “welfare state” in one of the world’s most unequal countries. 
The former student activist only just met the required minimum age to run in the presidential race, seven years after being elected to his first political job as a member of Chile’s Chamber of Deputies.

Gabriel%20Boric,%20a%20millennial%20president%20for%20a%20new%20Chile%20_%20Monitor_files/container_002.htm On Sunday, he prevailed over far-right rival Jose Antonio Kast, an ultra-conservative lawyer who had promised to cut taxes and social spending in a country shaken in 2019 by deadly mass protests for a more just and equal society.
Boric has vowed to relegate Chile’s neoliberal economic model, which dates from the era of dictator Augusto Pinochet and is widely seen as sidelining the poor and working classes, “to the grave.”

And he promised to bring about “a welfare state so that everyone has the same rights no matter how much money they have in their wallet.”
Chile has one of the world’s biggest income gaps. One percent of its population owns 25 percent of the wealth, according to a UN agency.
People are heavily indebted, having to pay wholly or in part for education and healthcare. Pensions are entirely made up of private savings. ‘Tremendously fractured’ 
“If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism in Latin America, it will also be its grave,” Boric said on the campaign trail.
The millennial was the candidate for the Approve Dignity coalition that includes Chile’s Communist Party — an association that caused discomfort for many voters in a country deeply suspicious of communist doctrine.
But he has laughed off the fears, telling AFP in a message to investors in October “that it is not possible to do business or for a country to grow when a society is tremendously fractured, as it is in Chile.” Boric has promised to reduce the work week from 45 to 40 hours, to advance “green development” and to create 500,000 jobs for women.
He has also vowed to reform Chile’s pension and healthcare systems to promote access for the poor.
Boric backed the 2019 anti-government revolt that resulted in dozens of deaths in clashes with police, and prompted a referendum that resulted in a process to rewrite Chile’s pro-business, dictatorship-era constitution