With 55.8% compared to the 44.1% obtained by Kast and a historical voter turnout of 55%, “Boric has a fully positioned mandate,” adds Ortiz. Branded as “communist” by his detractors because of the alliance of the Broad Front to which he belongs with the Communist Party, the great doubt of the market is which Boric is going to be the one who is going to govern: the one with the most extreme positions that was shown in the first round or the most moderate that appeared in the face of the ballot. “That is the great unknown and as long as that is not transparent, the (economic) uncertainty is going to remain,” said Ortiz.
The triumph speech delivered by Boric before thousands of people who occupied the central Alameda Avenue on Sunday night, was more moderate. “We will expand social rights and we will do so with fiscal responsibility,” he said.
“We will do it taking care of our macroeconomy. We will do it well and that will allow to improve pensions and health without going backwards in the future ”, he added.
“Whether this uncertainty is reduced depends a lot on the person who is named in the Treasury portfolio. It is not the same as a person who is within the hard circle of candidate Boric from the first round or a minister who is in a more center-left position, “added Ortiz.
In the campaign for the second round, Boric joined renowned economists, such as Andrea Repetto, the first Chilean to obtain a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or Ricardo Ffrench-Davis, professor at the University of Chile and economist at the School of Chicago
Boric, 35, promised in his campaign to promote a “welfare state” in one of the countries with the greatest social inequality, a gap at the origin of a “social outbreak” that shook the country as of October 18, 2019 .
The biggest obstacle to moving quickly in the reforms that Boric promised – such as the end of the private Pension Fund Administrators, a universal health system and 500,000 new jobs for women, among others – is the composition of the Congress that will assume with he, divided equally between left and right parties.
“Governing will be very, very difficult,” said Michael Shifter, of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.
Participation in Sunday’s ballot (55.4% according to official projections) was record in a country with high abstention and with a center electorate that was orphaned of candidates, when Boric and Kast were left as rivals in the ballot.
“Boric will have to heal a nation,” said Patricio Navia of New York University.
“But the process of drafting a new Constitution is still underway and there will be a plebiscite on the new Constitution in less than a year. So I don’t think there is much time to heal. 2022 will be a tough year, “he added.
A Convention dominated by leftist representatives drafts a new Constitution to replace the one approved under the Augusto Pinochet regime, which is credited with the relative Chilean economic well-being, but is also blamed for strong social inequality. 1% of Chileans own more than 25% of the wealth, according to a report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
After a 5.8% drop in GDP in 2020 due to the pandemic, Chile ends 2021 with a growth projection of 11.5%. For 2022 a slowdown is announced, with GDP growth between 2 and 3%.
Much of this year’s growth was fueled by government aid of about $ 3 billion a month to stimulate an economy ravaged by the pandemic, and early withdrawals from private pension funds of about $ 50 billion approved by the Congress under strong pressure from public opinion.
Source From: Ambito
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