Cabinet shuffle in Chile

CHILE - In Brief 10 Mar 2023 by Robert Funk

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If a week is a long time in politics, this one was endless, especially for president Gabriel Boric. On Wednesday the government’s tax reform was voted down in the House of Deputies. Although the government was quick to blame the opposition – and the opposition indeed opposed the reform as it was presented – what was more problematic was that many government-friendly deputies simply stayed away. In other words, one of President Boric’s most important pieces of legislation failed because the government did not lay the political groundwork, ensuring it had the votes. By law, this bill cannot be presented again in the House of Deputies for another year, and while it could be presented through the Senate, that would require the Senate to approve such a move by a 2/3 majority. Given that the Senate is divided pretty much in half, that majority seems highly unlikely. The loss of the tax reform is a major political defeat for the government not only because of the bill itself, but because its purpose was to finance part of the Boric’s social programs, such as increasing the Guaranteed Universal Pension of 250.000 pesos (USD 315). The scale of the defeat was so great that the president was left with no choice but to engineer a major cabinet shuffle. Although the main culprit for this particular failure was Finance Minister Marcel, fortunately he remains in office. His undersecretary, though, was moved to the Foreign Ministry, replacing José Miguel Ahumada, the undersecretary for international trade who tried and failed to scupper TPP11. Indeed, the Foreign Ministry was the focus of a good part of the cabinet shuffle, with the president removing the minister and both undersecret...