Who is Gabriel Boric, the new elected president of Chile

With a count that advanced rapidly, already at 8:30 p.m. in Chile, 99% of the tally sheets had been reached, it was announced that the winner of the presidential ballot was the leftist Gabriel Boric, with 55% of the votes.

His opponent, the ultra-conservative José Antonio Kast, reached 44% and publicly acknowledged defeat.

Gabriel Boric becomes the new president of Chile after historic elections

“I just got off the phone with @gabrielboric and congratulated him on his great success. From today he is the elected president of Chile and deserves all our respect and constructive collaboration. Chile is always first, “said Kast on his Twitter account.

Once the official count ends and Boric is designated as the winner, he must wait until March 22, 2022 for the change of command with the current president, Sebastián Piñera.

Boric is 35 years old, the minimum age to run, and will be the youngest president in his country. Although when he assumes he will already be 36 years old (his birthday is February 11).

Boric advocates a stronger state and guaranteed social rights after decades of orthodox liberalism. To do this, he proposes a tax reform that includes increasing the tax burden on the richest and ending the private pension system. It also wants to establish 40 hours of work per week (currently there are 45 in the country), promote “green development”, create 500,000 jobs for women and a national care system.

At the end of his campaign, Boric had said: “We are the heirs of those who have fought to make Chile a more just and dignified country … We are going to make the changes that Chile needs despite those who oppose it, because Chile has been demanding it. since many years”.

Politically active from a young age

Initiated in his youth in leftist movements, Boric became a university leader and became president of the Student Federation of the University of Chile. The Sunday newspaper magazine The Mercury put him as one of the top 100 young leaders in 2012.

“We represent the process of change and transformation that is coming, (but) with certainty, with the gradualness that is necessary,” he promised from his native city of Punta Arenas (south), on the shores of the Strait of Magellan, where this politician dreamed of since childhood with a welfare model for your country.

Since his early years in politics, he has been one of those who support the drafting of a new constitution, which is currently the case.

In 2014 he entered the Chilean Congress as a deputy and since then he has remained in office.

During the 2019 social protests, which put the government of Sebastián Piñera on the ropes, he became one of the legislators who supported the cause of the protesters, but he was also one of those who helped channel that uprising into a dialogue in the Congress.

He has been very critical of the positions of the presidents who arrived at the Palacio de la Moneda with the Concertación line (an alliance that ran from the center to the center-left and that in recent years has blurred and lost space), especially with Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet, who did not support his desire to be president, but who, given the options left by the first round, did not hesitate to adhere to his candidacy – taking and asking for precautions – Boric.

The candidate, born in Punta Arenas (extreme south of Chile) and the eldest son – of three brothers – of a family of Croatian and Spanish descent (exactly from Catalonia), participates as a representative of the Approve Dignity coalition, which brings together left-wing parties, including the Communist Party.

Latin American presidents greet and congratulate Gabriel Boric, Chile’s new president

In his campaign for the left-wing primary election, in which he surprisingly beat Communist Party candidate Daniel Jadue, he climbed a huge cypress tree, just as he did as a child. That image became a symbol of his campaign throughout Chile, he recalls AFP.

From a very young age Gabriel had a great fondness for books and also a very strong connection with Punta Arenas, a city that at the beginning of the 20th century welcomed his Croatian ancestors during a wave of European migrants who crossed the Strait of Magellan.

When he was a student at the British School, one of the most traditional in Punta Arenas, his parents say that he went out for a walk through the streets marveling at the dozens of monuments and heritage houses in this city, which also supports an inclement southern climate with strong gales exceeding 100 km / h.

Boric is currently single and has no children. The political scientist Irina Karamanos has been his partner for three years.

Since childhood, he has suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and receives medical help to treat the condition.(I)