Sebastián Piñera, who was twice president of Chile, died on Tuesday when the helicopter he was piloting fell into Lake Ranco. He was “a democrat from the first hour,” as Gabriel Boric, current Chilean president and Piñera’s successor, referred to in the official statement confirming the news.
Known as “the locomotive” since his beginnings as a senator, the nickname represented him both in his business role and in his political life, during which he personified Chile’s democratic alternation and led the right to the Government after 20 years of a centre-centre coalition. left.
Piñera, born in Santiago in 1949, was the third of the six children of Magdalena Echenique and José Piñera, founder of the Christian Democratic Party, born from the fusion of the National Falange and smaller conservative and Christian groups. It has never been entirely clear the reasons why the former president did not militate in his father’s party, showing from the beginning an ambiguous attitude towards the figure of Pinochet.
Piñera defended the former Chilean dictator when he was arrested in London in 1998; Ten years earlier, in the 1988 plebiscite, he had made public his negative vote, opposing the permanence of Augusto Pinochet’s military regime in power.
When it comes to his business figure, he has been equally irreverent, earning himself the nickname of the “Chilean Berlusconi.” Not only were they similar in being the main shareholders of football clubs, but they were among the richest people in their respective countries. Piñera had a fortune estimated by Forbes at about $2.9 billion, the fifth largest in the Latin American country, according to the 2023 ranking.
However, the businessman was not new to politics, since since the restoration of democracy in 1990, he was a senator and president of the Alliance for Chile, which brought together the National Renewal, the party that sought to represent the most right-wing. moderate, and the Independent Democratic Union, the Pinochet legacy of the Chilean right.
After suffering an electoral defeat in the 2005 elections against Bachelet, he was promoted to La Moneda in 2009. A month before being sworn in as president, Chile suffered one of the worst earthquakes in its history, undoubtedly marking his mandate. The earthquake – with a magnitude of 8.8, in February 2010 – led to the rescue of 33 miners who lived 700 meters underground for 69 days. This catastrophe was projected by the Government as a symbol of its mandate, trying to show that, with business logic, things could be done well.
Without making the right turn that his own sector would have liked, “he promoted pioneering laws and public policies in favor of LGTBIQ rights, giving equal, respectful and gentle treatment to independent organizations,” as stated by the Integration Movement and Homsexual Liberation on social networks, showing their condolences for the death of the former president. Additionally, he promoted the Civil Union Agreement for people of the same sex, which would later become law.
Thus, during his first term he established himself as a leader who was never a traditional Chilean rightist, historically more conservative, which is why in his own ranks there are those who viewed him with a certain distrust.
Months before saying goodbye to La Moneda, he already stated that he did not rule out a future presidential candidacy, again obtaining the leadership of the country in 2018, against a weakened center-left and without strong leadership. Michelle Bachelet, who expressed her condolences yesterday afternoon, gave her the presidential sash for four more years, extremely complex years with the accumulation of obstacles.
The first one he had to face was the social outbreak of October 2019, where demands and unrest among the Chilean people accumulated, an outbreak described by Piñera as “a non-traditional coup d’état.”
In addition, he had to face the pandemic during his administration, against which he applied a business mentality, as described by local media. The former president negotiated vaccines with laboratories before his neighboring countries, generating a certain calm in the streets due to the general inoculation of the Chilean population.
In March 2022 he handed over command to the president of the Frente Amplio, Gabriel Boric, who announced three days of national mourning and cited Piñera’s first words upon returning to power in 2018: “We are all Chile and we must dream it, draw it and build it together. all”.
