Sebastián Piñera, a skilled businessman surpassed by a turbulent Chile

The president of Chile, Sebastian PiñeraA skilled and millionaire businessman, he was at a crossroads in the final stretch of his second government, marked by a social outbreak, an economic and health crisis, and now engulfed in uncertainty by an impeachment process.

At 71 years of age, Piñera, owner of an estimated net worth of US $ 2,700 million, according to Forbes magazine, won his second term in 2017 under the slogan “Join better times”, something that almost a month before the elections that will choose his successor resonates as an irony after four years of social storms, collapse of trust in institutions and a deep disconnect between society and the elite that in Chile, historically, a group of families with economic and political power is identified .

The Chilean scene took a radical turn after the social outbreak of October 2019, when there were massive protests unleashed by an increase in the number of subways that ended up adding a great claim against a free market model with the absence of the State in education, health, pensions and no social welfare.

Then came the pandemic and the economic recession, but when signs of recovery gave the president a break, the publication of the Pandora Papers on the sale of Minera Dominga in 2010 by a company owned by Piñera’s children, again tarnished his image.

This case led the Prosecutor’s Office to open a criminal investigation and the opposition to present a constitutional accusation this Wednesday, the first step in an impeachment process.

In power since March 2018, the president had assured that this accusation promoted by the center-left opposition, which controls the Chamber of Deputies, had no “basis whatsoever.”

Piñera will be able to continue in office, with a ban on leaving the country, pending the ruling of the Senate, where the forces are more balanced and where two-thirds are required to seal his dismissal.

The discord clause

According to an investigation by local media CIPER and LaBot, part of the Pandora Papers of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Minera Dominga was sold to businessman Carlos Alberto Délano, Piñera’s friend, for US $ 152 million, in a business conducted partly in the British Virgin Islands.

The payment had to be made in three installments, and the contract contained a controversial clause that made the last payment conditional on “not establishing an area of ​​environmental protection over the area of ​​operations of the mining company, as claimed by environmental groups.”

The Piñera government, according to the investigation, ended up not protecting the area in which the mine would operate, so the third payment was given free rein.

Piñera has affirmed that he was not aware of this business because before his first presidency (2010-2014) he put the administration of his assets under blind trusts.

The turn

Just a few days before the social outbreak of October 18, 2019, Piñera affirmed that Chile was “an oasis” in Latin America.

That night, when Santiago was burning with rage, the president was caught enjoying a pizza in a restaurant in an exclusive sector of Santiago. That image of him surrounded by his grandchildren was for a majority of Chileans a reflection of the division between an elite disconnected from the working and middle classes.

Surprised by the strength of the social movement, Piñera had to renounce his international aspirations and cancel the organization of the APEC leaders’ meeting and the UN COP-25 climate change summit, which were going to put Chile in a star role in those days.

The protests were channeled into a constituent process. A joint Convention elected at the polls in May is drafting a new Magna Carta, which will replace the one inherited from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), accused of being one of the causes of social inequality.

In 2010 he became the first right-wing president since the return of democracy in 1990. And from that first period (2010-2014) he embodies the trinity at the root of the fracture between population and leaders: economic, political and political power. institutional.

Businessman

This Harvard economics doctor, who piloted his own helicopter, exactionist of the Chilean airline LAN -now the international Latam-, a television channel and a football club, took time to renounce his investments when he first arrived at the Palace of La Moneda.

The son of a former Christian Democratic ambassador, Piñera was the only great Chilean businessman openly opposed to Pinochet. Elected senator when democracy returned, he aligned himself with the center-left in crucial votes in Congress, for which he was viewed with distrust by radical sectors of the right.

Married to Cecilia Morel, father of four children and nine grandchildren, he ended his first government with a popularity of 50%, while today his disapproval is 68%, according to the latest survey by the Center for Public Studies (CEP), prior to the publication of the Pandora Papers.