Gabriel Boric beat the far right in Chile. Now he has to unite a divided country
Victory is sweet. The hundreds of thousands of Chileans who took to the streets to celebrate the victory of the leftwing former student leader, Gabriel Boric, in Chile’s presidential runoff elections certainly thought so. Boric won with a 12-point margin and a historic number of votes, imposing a convincing defeat on the rightwing candidate José Antonio Kast that few would have predicted only a month ago. Yet Boric’s victory speech was anything but gloating.
Nodding towards the years of polarisation and protest leading up to the election, he stressed the need for “social cohesion, refinding ourselves, and sharing common ground”.
Earlier in his campaign he vowed to “bury neoliberalism”, sounding like the same revolutionary politician who led the social protests of 2011 and frustrated many parliamentary colleagues from traditional political parties during his eight years as a congressional deputy.… Seguir leyendo »