President Boric reaches the middle of his term with pending social promises

The president of ChiliGabriel Boric, reaches the middle of his term after two years of government marked by two failed attempts to reform the Constitution inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship and a legislative crisis that has eroded his electoral promises to implement in-depth social reforms.

However, the president defended on Monday that Chile “it’s better” since his administration began. He also admitted that there are pending issues.

“The way to commemorate two years of government is not with great speeches, it is by making, it is by realizing that the country is moving forward, and that we are better but that we can be even better“, he stated on a visit to the Maule region, 250 kilometers south of Santiago, to launch a new train section.

Among the social reforms that Boric noted on Monday as achievements are the reduction of the working day from 45 to 40 hours by law, the increase in the minimum wage from $361 to $517, free co-payment system for oriented health to relieve the most disadvantaged and the law for the payment of alimony to debtor fathers and mothers.

But at the same time, social promises have an extensive list of pending items, which society has been demanding for decades. The president, who mentioned public health and education, admitted: “We have to improve and put more effort, more passion, more strength into security, we know that security is one of the main concerns of citizens”.

His government has not managed to reform the pension system – a proposal that has been stuck in Congress for months – and the educational system requires improvements to its infrastructure problems, as well as a strengthening of public health, compared to a private health system. that only 20% of users in the country access.

According to the political analyst at the Adolfo Ibánez University, Fernando Wilson, it is a government that “hopes to survive and contain“topics from which you can base a speech”of relative success” more than a government that can do what it wanted to do. He “Today’s Chile is very different from what they offered in the government program”, so, he emphasizes, the country could hardly be better.

Wilson points out that the government “is subject to the will of forces that are foreign to it” as part of the reasons why proposed reforms have not advanced.

For Rogelio Gajardo, a 43-year-old salesman in a business who voted for Boric, the president “It seems like he lives in a parallel reality when he says that we are better; According to him, health is improving, education is improving and that is not the case.”.

He believes that his governmentit has been a disappointment“and that Boric”It contradicts all its principles, all its great propaganda of a better future thanks to politics, the ideas of a progressive government that in the end ended up being much more of the same with worse, more amateur execution, it is disappointing.”.

The lack of a majority in a fragmented Congress led to the rejection of the fiscal reform with which the government intended to finance its major structural reforms in health and pensions, to which is added the rejection of the Chileans in two plebiscites on the new constitutional texts — one with a leftist tendency and the other conservative—with which it was intended to replace the Magna Carta in force since the military dictatorship (1973-1990).

The latest surveys show that “the perception in Chili It’s just that today we are worse.” and “that the country has not advanced“, the political analyst at the University of Santiago, Marcelo Mella, told the AP. He attributes this perception not only to government management but to the “Polarization” in the country, right after the crisis after the outbreak and the pandemic that left effects that have not yet been overcome, says the analyst.

Although Boric defended the control of inflation as one of his advances, which reached double figures after the pandemic – 14% that was not seen in Chile decades ago -, the sociologist from the University of Chile, Octavio Avedaño, emphasizes that “prices remain high”, that economic reactivation has not yet arrived and that this affects job creation.

Also in organized crime and public security, there are crimes that “intensify in magnitude and violence” and become central for citizens, says Avedaño.

Security is an issue that the government has had difficulty handling because “It did not have a priority place in their program” and is “uncomfortable” for some sectors of the Chilean left, analyzes Mella, for whom organized crime “It is a regional problem” linked to drug trafficking circuits not only attributable to Chile.

Mella considers that the second part of the mandate will have to be oriented towards “national recovery” to reach the situation prior to the social crisis of 2019 and the pandemic of 2020.

Boric promised to continue working so that Chile “be a fairer, more egalitarian country, kinder to its people”, with a more cohesive society.