Ten years after leading student protests demanding better education, Gabriel Boric is set to become Chile's youngest-ever president, capping a remarkable rise for the Andean nation's progressive left.
The former law student who has pledged to bury Chile's "neoliberal" economic model convincingly defeated far-right rival Jose Antonio Kast in the country's presidential runoff on Sunday."I am going to be a president of all Chileans, whether you voted for me or not," Boric, 35, said in a call with current President Sebastian Pinera on Sunday night. "I am going to do my best to get on top of this tremendous challenge.
"If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave," Boric said when he won the candidacy of his leftist bloc. "Do not be afraid of the youth changing this country." By 2014, still in his 20s, he had joined the national Congress as a lower-house lawmaker, representing Chile's vast and sparsely populated southernmost region of Magallanes.
He just reached the threshold of 35,000 signatures needed to be a candidate. But then he beat out the popular Santiago-region mayor, Daniel Jadue, of the Communist Party, to lead the leftist alliance.
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