Guwahati News Desk: After a bruising campaign against lawmaker Jose Antonio Kast, Gabriel Boric was elected Chile’s next president on Sunday.
According to reports, Boric defeated Kast by more than 10 points.
Reacting to Boric’s victory, Kast immediately conceded defeat, tweeting a photo of himself on the phone congratulating his opponent on his “grand triumph.” He then later travelled personally to Boric’s campaign headquarters to meet up with his rival.
Meanwhile, in a video conference organised by President Sebastian Pinera with Boric, Pinera offered his government’s full support during the three month transition.
After attaining victory, Boric highlighted the progressive positions that launched his improbable campaign, including a promise to fight climate change by blocking a proposed mining project in Chile, which is the world’s largest copper producer.
He also promised to end Chile’s private pension system, the hallmark of the neoliberal economic model, imposed by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
Boric said, “We are a generation that emerged in public life demanding our rights be respected as rights and not treated like consumer goods or a business.”
He added by saying, “We know there continues to be justice for the rich, and justice for the poor, and we no longer will permit that the poor keep paying the price of Chile’s inequality.”
Boric also gave an extended shout out to Chilean women, promising they will be “protagonists” in a government that will seek to “leave behind once and for all the patriarchal inheritance of our society.”
Moreover, his victory is likely to be felt throughout Latin America, where ideological divisions have been on the rise amid the coronavirus pandemic, which sped up the reversal of a decade of economic gains, exposed longstanding deficiencies in health care and deepened inequality that is among the worst in the world.