Chile's millennial president takes office with plans for change

Leftist former student leader Gabriel Boric was sworn in Friday as Chile's youngest-ever president, with plans to turn the country into a greener, more egalitarian "welfare state."

Aged 36, Boric takes over the reins of a country clamoring for change following mass protests in 2019, which he supported, against deep-rooted inequality in income, healthcare, education and pensions.

The revolt, which left dozens dead and hundreds injured, was the catalyst for a process now under way to rewrite Chile's dictatorship-era constitution.

Boric has vowed to relegate "to the grave" Chile's neoliberal economic model, which dates from the era of military despot Augusto Pinochet and is widely seen as sidelining the poor and working classes.

One percent of Chile's population owns about a quarter of its wealth.

Despite concern over his Frente Amplio (Broad Front)'s political alliance with the Communist Party in a country that traditionally votes for the center, Boric won a surprise runaway election victory last December.

He succeeded in mobilizing women and the youth, with a record voter turnout giving him nearly 56 percent of the vote to beat far-right Pinochet apologist Jose Antonio Kast.

The men, polar opposite political outsiders, had polled neck-and-neck ahead of the vote.

As the stock exchange dropped on news of Boric's victory, he vowed in his first official address to "expand social rights" in Chile, but to do so with "fiscal responsibility." 

Boric took the oath Friday in Valparaiso, the seat of Congress, in a suit but no tie, appearing to hold back tears of emotion as he received the presidential sash from his predecessor Sebastian Pinera.

He expressed a "great sense of responsibility and duty to the people" of Chile.

"We will do our best to rise to the challenges we face as a country," the new president said.