Gabriel Boric becomes Chile's youngest President; here's all about former student activist

Gabriel Boric, who is a leftist millennial and bagged popularity during anti-government protests in Chile was elected as the country’s next president on Sunday. Boric received 56% votes and defeated a free-market firebrand favoured by former US President Donald Trump, José Antonio Kast. While Kast was defeated by over 10 points, he tried to attack Boric claiming that the leftist would end unbecoming puppet of his allies in Chile’s Communist Party and increase the country’s hailed record as Latin’s America’s most stable, advanced economy. On 11 March 2022, he will be sworn in as Chile’s youngest president ever. 

“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,” Boric said. “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.”

Who is Gabriel Boric?

It is to note that 35-year-old Gabriel Boric was reportedly not a prominent figure in the political scene of the nation. However, he rose to prominence during anti-government protests. He was born in Punta Arenas in 1986 and has boasted about his home region, Magallanes. In 2011, when he was in the final year of the law degree, Boris emerged as the leader of education protesters that were taking place in the country with students taking over their campuses and faculties amid a long and cold winter. The protests were organised to demand free and high-quality education for all students. 

The Guardian stated the protests were finally controlled with a modest compromise that ultimately led to free education for some of the students. Most of the movement’s young leaders later ran for office and joined the congress or acquired positions in the local government. Without completing his law degree, Boric won Chile’s Congress in 2013 and then served two terms as the deputy. This allowed him to become of of the first Congress member to cross Chile’s two traditional coalitions in the entire process.

He has pledged to decentralise the country and implement a welfare state in Chile. Boric has also committed to increasing public spending and including more women, non-binary citizens and indigenous people, in a way that has never happened before. 

Image: AP