The Times - UK (2021-12-21)

the times | Tuesday December 21 2021 V2 35

RODRIGO GARRIDO/REUTERS; MAURO PIMENTEL, JAVIER TORRES/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Alec Baldwin accused

over fatal set shooting

Page 38

Trouble with Venice’s

bridge of slides

Page 37

A 35-year-old former student protest

leader has been elected president of

Chile, heralding a revival of the left in

one of Latin America’s richest nations.

Gabriel Boric received 56 per cent of

the votes, a clear 12 points ahead of his

hard-right opponent, José Antonio

Kast, after a deeply divisive campaign.

Boric will become one of the youngest

heads of state in the world when he

takes office next year.

The Chilean peso crashed yesterday

to its lowest levels against the dollar

since 2020 as markets absorbed the

news that the young radical had won

the election by a comfortable margin.

Boric, who will be inaugurated on

March 11, has pledged to increase taxes,

scrap private pensions and oppose

mines that “destroy” the environment.

The election drew a historically high

turnout of 56 per cent, the highest since

voting ceased to be mandatory in 2012.

The two candidates had presented po-

larised visions, with Kast, 55, pledging

to crack down hard on migration and

crime, and Boric promising to tackle

the country’s deep inequalities.

The result became clear within two

hours of polls closing and there were

euphoric scenes in Santiago as

hundreds of thousands of supporters

gathered to celebrate.

In his victory speech Boric pledged to

dismantle the private pension system

and improve public healthcare and

education. All three issues had pro-

voked protests against the govern-

ment of President Piñera, a bil-

lionaire conservative.

“We are going to create

a more just society for

everyone,” said Boric, to

cheers. He added that the

battle against climate

change would be a key

focus.

Kast, a father of nine, was

quick to congratulate his

rival, saying that he

“deserves all our re-

spect”. Piñera

praised the young

Ex-student leader, 35,

turns Chile left after

presidential victory

congressman and called on him to be

the “president of all Chileans”. During a

televised call Boric told Piñera: “I am

going to do my best to get on top of this

tremendous challenge.”

Although Chile had a centre-left

government until 2018, the election of

the tattooed former student leader is

seen as a sea-change.

Boric, who first led student protests

in 2011, has promised to reverse the

neoliberal pro-market policies that

were established under the dictatorship

of Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s.

Those policies helped Chile become

one of the most successful economies

in Latin America but a huge income gap

has emerged, with the richest 1 per cent

of Chileans owning about a quarter of

its wealth. That and the rising cost of

public services has caused discontent.

In a referendum last year voters

overwhelmingly backed a proposal to

rewrite the Pinochet-era constitution,

which some scholars say is illegitimate

because it was drafted under dictatorial

rule and left-wing critics say makes

reform of the private sector almost

impossible. Boric has been a staunch

supporter of constitutional reform.

President Maduro of Venezuela

described Boric’s election as a “vic-

tory against fascism”. President

Díaz-Canel of Cuba tweeted con-

gratulations. During his cam-

paign Boric stressed that he had

little sympathy for the region’s

authoritarian leftists. He has ex-

pressed “solidarity” with anti-

government protesters in

Cuba and criticised the Ven-

ezuela for “grave human

rights abuses”. He is the

second “millennial” to

reach high office in Latin

America in recent years.

The other is President

Bukele, 40, of El Salvador.

Santiago shuffle, leading

article, page 33

Chile

Stephen Gibbs Caracas

Hundreds of thousands of Chileans took to the streets in the capital, Santiago, to

celebrate the election of Gabriel Boric, left, as president. The former campaigner

has promised to increase taxes, scrap private pensions and improve healthcare

in a country where 1 per cent of the population owns a quarter of the wealth

Harare threatens to return Rhodes bones

President Mnangagwa has called for

the remains of Cecil Rhodes to be re-

turned to Britain in exchange for skulls

and other war trophies held in London.

The colonialist’s tomb in what is now

a national park has been left untouched

since his death in 1902 despite the up-

rising against the white-rule minority

government and growing anti-British

sentiment. Mnangagwa’s plan marks a

break with his predecessor, Robert

Mugabe, who protected the rock-hewn

grave even as the “Rhodes Must Fall”

campaign brought down statues and

busts in South Africa and Britain.

“His remains must be returned to

where he hailed from and we can also

have our ancestral remains which are

being kept in Europe,” Mnangagwa, 79,

told traditional leaders at a meeting in

Harare, the capital. “If you go to the

shrine, you don’t know if you are talking

to Rhodes or our ancestors.”

Rhodes chose the site of his grave

himself: a granite peak in what was then

Matopos, now Matobo National Park,

which is sacred to the local Ndebele

people. In pre-pandemic times it drew

15,000 visitors a year.

Zimbabwe has repeatedly demanded

the repatriation of remains, including

the heads of the spirit mediums Mbuya

Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi, hanged

in 1898 during “the First Chimurenga”

or uprising, which it says are held at the

Natural History Museum.

Godfrey Mahachi, director of the

National Museums and Monuments of

Zimbabwe, told The Times: “There are

consequences for how we treat the

deceased. These implications have a

bearing on the past, present and future.”

Rhodes had ambitions to “save Africa

from itself” and for an uninterrupted

railway link between the top and

bottom of the continent under the

control of the empire.

The Natural History Museum has

confirmed that it holds the remains of 11

individuals from the former Rhodesia

but that after extensive research it had

“found no evidence to suggest that they

are the remains of Mbuya Nehanda or

others associated with the First

Chimurenga — nor have we found any

evidence that any of these individuals

have ever been held by the museum”.

Zimbabwe

Jane Flanagan Cape Town

sordid scenes at the cinema

will re-release films that were previous-

ly banned or heavily censored.

Over the past year there has been a

dramatic overhaul of the strict Islamic

laws that have long held sway in the

UAE: individuals no longer need a

licence to buy alcohol; unmarried cou-

ples are allowed to live together; suicide

has been decriminalised; and unmar-

ried women do not have to flee the

country to give birth. The working

week has been cut to four-and-a-half

days — at a time when the pandemic

has made people around the world re-

evaluate their work schedules — and,

from next year, weekends will consist of

a Saturday and Sunday rather than a

Friday and Saturday, to align with west-

ern holidays and markets.

The latest efforts are part of a

continuing drive to attract more for-

eigners to the country. They already

outnumber locals by nine to one but

most have long been at odds with the

strict Islamic laws imposed by the state,

which became independent in h 1971.

The UAE is the Gulf’s second-biggest

economy and faced a severe recession

last year as Covid-19 took its toll on the

tourism industry and oil prices hit

record lows. As the region tries to

prepare for a post-oil future, attracting

investment and skilled workers is

crucial.

The pace of reform is partly linked to

developments in Saudi Arabia, which is

trying to recast itself as a more tolerant

society, with the UAE eager to wrangle

back some of the foreign investment

that has gone Riyadh’s way.

online

Profile: From campus

radical to president-elect

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