The elected and outgoing presidents of Chile, Gabriel Boric and Sebastián Piñera, took the first step in the succession on Monday, a day after the leftist won the elections comfortably, a result that caused the peso and the local stock market to fall.
At the door of the palace, hundreds of people awaited the arrival of the winner of the elections shouting “feel it, feel it, Boric president!”
The president-elect approached the crowd to salute and thank the support with his hand on his heart. He took minutes to approach the citizens while Piñera and his ministers waited for him inside.
Inside La Moneda, a group of public officials were waiting for him with a sign that read: “Hope won out over fear. Public officials welcome you, President. “
He also received the warmth of several dozen citizens at the exit of the hotel from where he left for La Moneda.
The 35-year-old deputy and former student leader – minimum age to assume the Presidency – defeated on Sunday, with 55.8% of the votes, the far-right José Antonio Kast, a 55-year-old lawyer, who obtained 44.1%.
The election registered a historic turnout, with 55.6% of the more than 15 million voters.
In a first reaction to his victory, much looser than expected, the markets fell into panic. The peso fell 3.02% against the dollar at the opening of the day, while the Santiago Stock Exchange fell 6.8%,
President elect
From early in the morning, authorities from the Chilean political and business world sent messages to the president-elect to collaborate with his next government, which will take office on March 11, 2022.
“We congratulate President-elect Gabriel Boric and invite him to be part of this historic process of writing the new Constitution. (We are) available to establish the bridges that allow us to move in that direction”Said the president of the Constituent Convention, the Mapuche academic Elisa Loncon.
“Gabriel, he is going to be one of the youngest presidents of recent times and one always has to know how to combine strength, idealism, the spirit of youth with prudence, the experience of gray hair.“Piñera said in a phone call with Boric last Sunday after learning of the victory on election day.
Why did Boric win?
Boric’s electoral victory becomes one of the loosest since Chile returned to democracy, in an election in which 8.3 million of the more than 15 million voters participated
Analysts agree that the leftist’s triumph was based on the greater turnout in Sunday’s ballot: 1.2 million more votes than in the first round, in which Kast won.
“There is a whole generation of people who have voted sporadically or have not voted and today they are joining the political process in Chile, which from the point of view of civic engagement is good for this country that needs to strengthen democracy”Declared Marcelo Mella, an academic at the University of Santiago.
Young Chileans, traditionally reluctant to participate in elections, went to the polls to support Boric, according to experts.
“Boric was not my candidate, but I did vote because morally for the other candidate I could not. Hopefully (with Boric) there is greater equality and there is not so much corruption“Said Natalia López, a 35-year-old student.
Challenges for the future
Analysts affirm that Boric will have as its main mission to accompany the Constituent Convention that drafts a new Magna Carta that will replace the one inherited from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).
“Let us all take care of this process to have a Magna Carta that is one of encounter and not one of division as is the one that they imposed by blood and fire through a fraudulent plebiscite in 1980 and that cost us so much to change”, Alleged the president-elect when celebrating his triumph before tens of thousands of followers in the center of Santiago.
Boric reiterated his campaign promises, such as the shift towards a welfare state, guaranteed public pensions, universal and quality health and education, and respect for human rights.
Claudia Heiss, academic analyst at the University of Chile, argues that in a government that “promises to be transformative like Boric’s, the main challenge is to live up to expectations and it will not be easy.”
Experts argue that with a Congress divided almost equally between left and right, it will be difficult to approve social reforms, so Boric will have to seek alliances and consensus.
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