‘We Need a New Model’: Chile’s President-Elect in His Own Words
‘We Need a New Model’: Chile’s President-Elect in His Own Words
(Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg News interviewed Gabriel Boric on Aug. 27 when he was a candidate. He’s now the president-elect. In the light of his Dec. 19 victory, here are some highlights of that conversation.
On Economics
“On the political and socio-economic levels, Chile in the 1980s was the cradle of the neoliberal experiment. When it became democratic, it didn’t change the system. Its excesses were curbed but not its essence. We need a new model of development in which wealth creation is not mostly from mining, and distribution of wealth is not based on trickle-down. We need to break up and decentralize the concentration of wealth and include an environmental outlook. Future historians can give the approach a name but without question it has to have social and ecological components that are far more significant than the utilitarian and material ones that guided neoliberalism.”
“Laissez-faire economics doesn’t provide answers to the social or environmental needs we face in this country and the world.”
“To foreign investors, I say anyone willing to invest in a way that is environmentally sustainable with good labor standards that produces technology transfer and chains of production is more than welcome.”
On Being Leftist
“Our movement didn’t develop overnight but is the result of 15 years of social mobilization. We are the political expression of that process.”
“I feel part of a tradition of Latin American leftism, and I hope we will be able to foment a new Latin American fellowship to confront, from the south, the challenges faced by all of humanity. And the number one priority for humankind is the warming of the planet. When the Amazon is burning and being deforested, and Jair Bolsonaro says nobody tells me what to do in my country, I say to him, ‘Buddy, it’s not only your country, you are destroying what belongs to all of humankind.’”
On Venezuela
“I visited Venezuela in 2010 and that is not the direction I want to go. I want a place where rules are clear, where we can redistribute wealth in a better way. Today in Chile and the world we need to change the way we understand development.”
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