“We are going to live in challenging and tremendously complex times,” added the president, at the end of a day that began early at the Congress headquarters in Valparaíso, some 100 kilometers west of the capital, with the inauguration ceremony.
The president acknowledged that he would not have reached this position without the social protests that shook the country’s social and economic model, in his first speech after his inauguration.
“The people of Chile will judge us by our deeds and not by our words,” he stressed during his speech.
Boric’s rise to power marks a crossroads for Chile, long a bastion of free markets and economic responsibility in volatile South America. The country is reformulating its Augusto Pinochet-era constitution, which has underpinned growth but is accused of fostering inequality.
Boric made his most progressive speech since the campaign for the first round of the presidential elections, in November of last year: “My dream is that when we finish our mandate we can look at our children, our sisters, our parents (…) and let us feel that there is a country that protects us, that welcomes us, that cares for us, that guarantees rights and fairly repays the contribution and sacrifice of each one of you”.
At the head of a broad left-wing coalition that includes the Communist Party, he has promised to overhaul a market-based economic model to fight inequality that sparked violent protests in 2019, though he has toned down his fiery rhetoric in recent months.
Despite the fact that his words break with the economic system that has governed the country for more than three decades, Boric appealed for unity between political forces. “We are going to need all of us, government and opposition.”
With information from AFP and Reuters