Boric appoints a government with his faithful and pragmatic figures to calm the markets

Seven weeks after arriving at La Moneda on March 11, the president-elect of Chile, the leftist Gabriel Boric, presented his first Cabinet this Friday, where he has broken schemes on various fronts and has cleared up the main doubt that has persisted since the presidential campaign: if his government would be radical left –because of his initial proposals and his alliance with the Communist Party– or, on the other hand, would he take a social democratic route. In his main political decision since he was elected on December 19, the 35-year-old law graduate has taken this second path.

Boric has colored his government team with independent professionals and from the Socialist Party, the formation that was one of the trunks of the center-left Administrations that governed Chile after the dictatorship in the disappeared Concertación (1990-2010). He will have a Cabinet with 14 women and 10 men in which he installs his circle of trust in the most relevant political ministries and where, for the first time, a woman arrives at the Ministry of the Interior, the doctor Izkia Siches. Boric has turned the tables with the nomination in the Treasury of a moderate and transversally respected economist: Mario Marcel, current president of the Central Bank, an economist who has been one of the symbols in Chile of macroeconomic discipline. At 62, he is one of the oldest in a Cabinet where the average age is 49,with seven ministers under 40.

“Today a new path begins to be written in our democratic history.

We do not start from scratch: we know that there is a story that lifts and inspires us.

And we are sure that our mandate is very clear: promote changes and transformations that make it possible for justice and dignity to be our daily bread,” Boric assured.

The president-elect made the announcement in the courtyards of the National History Museum, in the center of Santiago de Chile, a symbol of the past and present and where he winked at nature.

In his speech, he made several references to the Chilean artist Violeta Parra.

Boric's Iron Circle

In a government that has a strong commitment to feminist struggles, more than half of the ministries will remain in the hands of women, in line with the parity that has been sought in the formation of the assembly that drafts a new Constitution. It is also the first time that a woman arrives at the Ministry of the Interior: the doctor Siches, a left-wing independent, a popular figure during the covid-19 pandemic who played a central role in the second presidential round that paved the way for victory of Boric. It is part of an iron circle that the president will install in the Government Palace from March 11, which is completed with his main political partner, Giorgio Jackson, from the Broad Front, who will have in his hands the relationship with Parliament, and the communist Camila Vallejo, who will serve as spokesperson.All four were student leaders in the university protests a decade ago, in 2011, and none of the four is over 35 years old.

The names of the political ministers who will clothe President Boric are not surprising.

What is an important change of direction is the nomination of Finance Minister Mario Marcel, an economist linked to the Socialist Party who played fundamental roles in center-left governments, respected across the board, candidate to lead the Treasury on several occasions (when came close was in 2006, in the first administration of Michelle Bachelet) and that since the social uprisings of 2019 has been the technical voice that has moderated several intemperate measures by Parliament, such as the consecutive approval of bills that allow people withdraw 10% of their pension savings.

While politics gallops at an unbridled pace, Marcel, from the Central Bank,

.

This rule allows automatic budget stabilizers to act throughout the cycle: it provides room to spend when the economy is weak and forces savings when the economy is strong.

It was a pioneering formula in the world –only Sweden and Switzerland implemented it at that time– and allowed the Chilean economy to successfully dodge major crises such as the one in 2008-2009.

The Treasury nomination was probably the most important in Boric's Cabinet. It is the position that has the fiscal coffers in its hands, a position that especially in this Administration is highly sensitive, given the profound changes that it seeks to make in matters such as taxes and pensions. Marcel, precisely, led a commission on pensions in the first government of Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), when the socialist refused to nominate him in the Treasury. His arrival at this ministry from the Central Bank – an autonomous body that led for a second term after the recent nomination of Sebastián Piñera – ratifies the moderate line that Boric has pushed since the second round campaign, which allowed him to win with a 55 % and a high number of votes.

With this Cabinet, Boric expands and reconfigures his government coalition. He was a presidential candidate for the Approve Dignity coalition, an alliance between his own formation, the Broad Front, and the Communist Party. In that alliance, sectors of the moderate left were banned from participating in a joint presidential primary, despite the interests of the now president-elect. When the ultraconservative José Antonio Kast obtained the largest number of votes in the first presidential round on November 21, however, Boric strongly moderated his speech, although he did not abandon the deep and structural changes that he considers necessary in this new political cycle in Chile, in multiple subjects. He then won the ballot with the support of the main faces of the Coalition, such as former President Lagos himself,that in an interview with EL PAÍS he preferred not to classify Boric as a social democrat: "You will know them by their works," he assured.

But the results of the parliamentary elections forced Boric to expand his support base in Congress to achieve the transformations he seeks for the 2022-2026 period. I approve of Dignity only has 37 of the 155 deputies and five senators of the 50 seats in the Upper House in the next Congress, so Boric understood that the only way to loyally add the 28 votes that the center-left has in the Lower House and the 13 he has in the Senate was to incorporate them into the Cabinet. He added faces of the parties that made up the center-left governments against which the Broad Front rebelled a decade ago. President Boric opted for the amplitude to install the Government, "to facilitate compliance with the program and ensure that the Constitutional Convention achieves its work and reach the exit plebiscite without problem",explained yesterday the president of the Communist Party, Guillermo Teillier, a community that remains with three portfolios.

Boric has incorporated women of great symbolism and trajectory in the first Cabinet in the history of Chile in which the ministers surpass the ministers.

In charge of leading the Foreign Ministry is the lawyer Antonia Urrejola, who joined the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights between 2018 and 2021 and presided over it in 2021, with an especially relevant role in democratic crises in the region, such as in Nicaragua.

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