Before Becoming Chile's Youngest President, Gabriel Boric Successfully Leads Neoliberal Student Protests

Chilean President-elect Gabriel Boric. (Twitter/@gabrielboric)

JAKARTA - Ten years after leading student protests demanding better education, Gabriel Boric won the political contest in Chile by beating right-wing politicians in the presidential election.

A former law student who has vowed to bury Chile's 'neoliberal' economic model, decisively beat his rival Jose Antonio Kast in the country's presidential election on Sunday

With 99.95 percent of the votes counted, Boric won with 55.87 percent of the vote, securing victory over Kast who trailed by 44.13 percent. It is planned that Boric will be sworn in as President on March 11.

"I will be president of all Chileans, whether you vote for me or not," Boric, 35, said in a phone call with current President Sebastian Pinera on Sunday evening.

"I will do my best to overcome this extraordinary challenge."

Boric rose to prominence after successfully leading student protests in 2011, demanding better and cheaper education. The protests sparked public anger at Chile's 'neo-liberal' market-oriented policies, which are widely seen as having helped fuel decades of rapid economic growth but have also fueled inequality.

Gabriel Boric with his supporters. (Twitter/@gabrielboric)

That imbalance sparked widespread social uprising in 2019, igniting the fuse of a progressive left political revival and the country's recasting of the country's dictatorial-era constitution.

"If Chile is the cradle of neo-liberalism, it will also be its grave. Don't be afraid of youth changing this country," Boric insisted when he won the nomination for his left bloc.

A native of Punta Arenas, at the southern tip of Chile, Boric as a student leads the Student Federation at the University of Chile in Santiago. While still in his 20s, he had joined the national Congress as a member of the lower house of parliament, representing the vast and sparsely populated Magallanes region in the south in 2014.

With thick black hair and a trimmed beard, he was now more presentable than in his disciple-leading days. Despite being known as the face of the left in Chile, Boric was originally a dark horse candidate for the presidency.

He had just reached the threshold of 35,000 signatures required to become a candidate. But then he defeated the popular mayor of the Santiago area, Daniel Jadue, of the Communist Party, to lead the left alliance.

Since then Boric has sought to distance himself from some of the more extreme views of left-wing groups in his alliance, including support from the Communist Party for President Nicolas Maduro's government in Venezuela.

Supported by the younger generation, there are plenty of memes online that support it. A number of celebrities stood behind him, including Chilean-American actor Pedro Pascal from "The Mandalorian" and Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal.

Not only that, Chile's former two-term President Michelle Bachelet, now the UN high commissioner for human rights, backed Boric, saying he would put Chile on "a path of progress for all, greater freedom, equality and human rights."

"You can count on me, I will act decisively to unite this country again," he told voters during a televised debate during the campaign.