The creation of a Political Committee, bringing together key ministries; a cabinet with 14 women and his residence in a conventional neighborhood of Santiago are some of the changes with the that Gabriel Boric arrives to assume the Presidency of Chile this Friday.
The left-wing leader, just 36 years old, will go down in the country’s history as the youngest president to assume power and the first who is not part of the two traditional center blocs that have led Chile since the return to democracy. in 1990.
The former student leader and former deputy -since 2014 for his native region, the southern Magallanes- describes himself as a feminist and environmentalist, does not usually wear ties or have his own house- and will join the group of ‘millennial’ presidents, in which the Finn Sanna Marin, New Zealander Jacinda Ardern and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador
Challenges and main proposals
His main challenges will be governing without a majority in Congress, maintaining the support of the electoral coalition that brought him to power, establishing a bridge of dialogue with the business community and governing with the economic slowdown that is expected for this year and the next hand in hand from the increase in income from copper exports.
Boric achieved victory offering deep transformations and among the main points of his agenda and electoral program is a tax reform to increase tax collection by 5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in four years to finance social reforms. The plan contemplates raising taxes on the wealthiest, companies, fuels and mining companies, as well as lowering the consumption tax (VAT), includes BBC.
As for the current system of Pension System Administrators (AFP), Boric had promised to end it, but after the victory he said he was willing to talk. His proposal is to create a new public and mixed system managed by an autonomous public institution and gradually a universal basic pension (PBU).
For health, he offered to gradually eliminate the Isapres system (private health insurance) and convert it into voluntary insurance. At the same time, create a Universal Health Fund (FUS) that finances health care in public and private centers, increasing public spending.
In labor matters, it proposes gradually reducing the working day to reach 40 hours per week and increasing the minimum wage, in addition to providing subsidies for the hiring of women and young people.
For migration, it proposes to reform the current policy to make it respect international agreements and human rights. Also measures such as registering undocumented immigrants and improving settlement and living conditions. Although it remains to be seen what measure to build a new ditch on the border with Bolivia to control irregular migration.
In education, it offers to strengthen public education, improve conditions for teachers, cancel educational debts, create a new credit system without bank intervention, until reaching universal gratuity.
To strengthen human rights, it offers to create a Permanent Qualifying Commission to review cases of rights violations and victims of homicides, torture and disappearances that occurred during the military regime of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). Other of his plans are to implement a plan to search for disappeared detainees and one for comprehensive reparation for people harmed during the social outbreak of 2019.
In terms of security, he proposes creating the Ministry of Security, Civil Protection and Citizen Coexistence, intervening in territories where drug trafficking and violence are concentrated, structurally reforming the Chilean police and creating a Prosecutor’s Office that can intervene in crimes such as drug trafficking, money laundering and corruption.
For Araucanía, a conflict zone with the original peoples, it offers territorial restitution and access to natural resources. Replace the ‘Antiterrorist Law’ with one related to human rights and comprehensive reparation measures for victims through the Intercultural Historical Truth and Clarification Commission.
In housing, it proposes to reduce prices and build 260,000 houses and implement a land policy for residential purposes.
In terms of gender, she offered to guarantee access to contraception, a new model of sexual education, promote a law to guarantee the voluntary interruption of pregnancy as a health benefit and allow the change of name and sex from the age of 14.
And for climate change, among its main proposals is to implement a National Water Security Policy that guarantees the human right to water and sanitation, with a focus on protecting and restoring ecosystems.
Precursor of a different left
Eduardo Arriagada, professor of Communications and co-director of the research and analysis laboratory of social networks at the Catholic University of Chile, He says that one of the main milestones that the incoming government will mark is that it will have a cabinet with a female majority, 14 women and 10 men.
“It is a cabinet with a majority of women and a fairly young group, something that will be characteristic, although there are some people with considerable experience in key positions such as the Ministry of Finance and Housing… it has been considered to be a fairly professional cabinet, very balanced, very broad, very well chosen and there has been little controversy regarding the appointments”, he comments.
For the international political analyst Juan Velasco in the country there are high expectations for the incoming government due to the change of position that the president-elect had in the second round and that he has maintained after his victory in key aspects to lay the foundations for what his mandate will be, for which he must work little by little and gradually.
“His cabinet complied with parity and responds to the expectations that a young voter demands, he has given the opportunity to people without political experience and the wink for the moderate position and for society in general was having appointed Mario Marcel as Minister of Finance , who was until recently president of the Central Bank, a technocrat who knows well how to maintain fiscal balances”, he says.
However, Velasco also mentions that the incoming government is going to have to deal with the drafting process of the new Constitution, since it comes to power with the discourse and conviction that it must be successful, although he mentions that there are internal attempts to complicate its progress hand in hand with bad publicity.
Stance in international politics
Internationally, Arriagada mentions that despite the fact that Boric will have an alliance of leftist parties in his government, even the most extreme that has defended the attacks of Russia or the regimes of Nicaragua and Venezuela, the future president has disassociated himself from those postures.
Boric has spared no criticism of them, but he has not been condescending to the center-left or the right either.
“He has used his own Twitter account to react to international conflicts, which has been very surprising… in international relations he is a person who has a position, as has rarely been seen before, of a Latin Americanist,” he points out. the professor
Arriagada comments that Boric has expressed on several occasions that he admires the former Bolivian vice president Álvaro García, the Colombian politician Gustavo Petro, the former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the former Uruguayan president José Mujica, leader of the Broad Front, a party with which he maintains constant communication. Other analysts have linked him to Pablo Iglesias and Íñigo Errejón, founders of the Spanish Podemos party.
“Boric has had a fairly clear position on the left, but very different from the one that dominated the region in the last decade, everyone around him has studied in London, he is a type of people more similar to what English Labor would be more than Latin American socialism… very different from Rafael Correa to Alberto Fernández”, he points out.
Arriagada emphasizes that international analysts have already made reference to the fact that a new type of left is emerging in Chile, which will be interesting in the same way that the liberal right was motivating for Republicans in the US at the time, and that this new type of left can be important motivational moment for American Democrats. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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