Sebastián Piñera


Miguel Juan Sebastián Piñera Echenique is a Chilean billionaire businessman, currently the sitting President of Chile since 2018, having previously served from 2010 to 2014.
The son of a Christian democratic politician and diplomat, he studied business engineering at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and economics at the Harvard University. He had an estimated net worth of 2.8 billion dollars in 2019 according to Forbes, making him one of the richest people in Chile.
A member of the right National Renewal party, he served as a senator for the East Santiago district from 1990 to 1998, running for the presidency in the 2005 election, which he lost to Michelle Bachelet, and again, successfully, in 2010. As a result, he became the first right-wing president to be democratically elected since 1958, and the first to hold the office since the departure of Augusto Pinochet in 1990.

Family

Piñera is the sixth child of the marriage between José Piñera Carvallo and Magdalena Echenique Rozas. Among his ancestors on his maternal side is his mother's great-great-grandmother, Luisa Pinto Garmendia, the sister of President Aníbal Pinto Garmendia and daughter of President Francisco Antonio Pinto and Luisa Garmendia Alurralde, who was a descendant of the penultimate Inca emperor, Huayna Capac. He is a nephew of the oldest living Roman Catholic bishop in the world, Bernardino Piñera, who died in 2020 due to complications from Covid-19.

Education

Piñera's family moved to Belgium one year after his birth and later to New York City, where his father was the Chilean ambassador to the United Nations. Piñera returned to Chile in 1955 and enrolled in the Colegio del Verbo Divino, from which he graduated in 1967.

Piñera then matriculated at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, from which he graduated in 1971 with an undergraduate degree in commercial engineering. Upon graduation, he was awarded the Raúl Iver Oxley Prize, which is given to the best overall student of each class.

Piñera continued on to Harvard University on a partial Fulbright Program for postgraduate studies in economics. During his time at Harvard, Piñera and a classmate coauthored an article, "The Old South's Stake in the Inter-Regional Movement of Slaves", for the Journal of Economic History. After three years at Harvard, Piñera graduated with both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics.

Teaching career

Piñera was an economics lecturer from 1971 until 1988 at the University of Chile, the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and Adolfo Ibáñez University. In 1971, he was in charge of Economic Political Theory in the School of Economics at the University of Chile and in 1972, at the Valparaiso Business School.

Foundations

In 1989, with Cecilia Morel, Danica Radic, and Paula Délano, Piñera created the Enterprising Women Foundation, originally called The House of Youth. The foundation aims to assist in the development of young women of lower income.
In 1973, Piñera created the foundation Fundación Futuro, of which he is president and whose directors are Cristián Boza D., María Teresa Chadwick P., Hugo Montes B., Cecilia Morel M., Renato Poblete S.J., and Fabio Valdés C. The head director of the foundation is Magdalena Piñera. The foundation's mission is to help in Chile's development of justice, freedom and democracy. The foundation was renamed Fundación Cultura y Sociedad after Piñera was elected president.
Under the Fundación Cultura y Sociedad, the Grupo Tantauco has the mission of environmentalism, and is administered by Juan Carlos Urquidi. It was created to support the proposals Piñera plans to institute during his presidency. In 2005, Piñera created Tantauco Park, a 1,180 km2 private natural reserve he bought and owns on the south end of Chiloé Island, in order to protect 118,000 hectares of the region's unique ecosystem. His foundation runs the park, which is open to the public and is an ecotourist location.
In fact, Piñera bought the 118,000 hectares in Chiloé through an offshore company in Panama. He has faced pressure to cede eight hectares to 16 indigenous families whose presence pre-dates Piñera's purchase and who have spent years negotiating to obtain title to their familial lands.
An additional project, Grupo Tantauco: Derechos Humanos, was proposed in hopes of beginning a reconciliation between the Chilean people who suffered human rights violations during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.

Businesses

Piñera was general manager of the Banco de Talca. In 1982, a warrant was issued for his arrest on charges of violating banking law. Piñera spent 24 days in hiding while his lawyers appealed the order. A writ of habeas corpus, first rejected by the Appeals Court but then approved by the Supreme Court, acquitted Piñera.
Piñera once owned 90% of Chilevisión. He also owned 27% of LAN Airlines ; 13% of Colo-Colo, a football club; and other minor stock positions in companies such as Quiñenco, Enersis, and Soquimich.
In July 2007, Piñera was fined approximately US$680,000 by Chile's securities regulator for not withdrawing a purchase order after receiving privileged information of LAN Airlines stock in mid-2006. Later that month, he resigned from the boards of LAN and Quintec.
To avoid a conflict of interest he sold Chilevisión for $160 million in 2010 to Time Warner. He also sold his shares of LAN in several rounds between February and March 2010, as well as his stake in Colo-Colo.
Piñera has built an estimated fortune of $US2.8 billion, according to Forbes magazine. His wealth is greatly due to his involvement in introducing credit cards to Chile in the late 1970s and his subsequent investments, mainly in LAN Airlines stock. Piñera acquired shares of the formerly state-owned company from Scandinavian Airlines in 1994, as part of a joint venture with the Cueto family.

Political career

In 1988 as Pinochet had lost the referendum and Chile was returning to democracy Piñera offered his support for the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle in his pre-candidacy for president.
In 1998, Piñera opposed the arrest and detention of Augusto Pinochet, in London, initiated by Baltasar Garzón, arguing that it was an attack on the sovereignty and dignity of Chile.
On 14 May 2005, in a surprise move Piñera announced his candidacy for the 2005 presidential election He has described his political philosophy as Christian humanism.

Presidential elections of 2009–2010

Piñera ran for President of Chile in the 2009–2010 election. Since August 2009, he led in opinion polls, competing with Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Marco Enríquez-Ominami and Jorge Arrate; all of whom are left-of-center candidates. In 13 December 2009 election, Piñera placed first in the results with 44.05% of the votes, while Frei placed second with 29.6% of the votes. Neither candidate received more than half of the total votes; therefore, according to the Constitution, Chileans returned to the polls for a final run-off election on Sunday, 17 January 2010.
That evening, the third and final preliminary results were announced by the Undersecretary of the Interior. These showing accounted for 99.77% of the total ballot boxes. Of the votes, Piñera received 51.61% and Frei received 48.39%.
Piñera invested an estimated 13.6 million USD in his presidential campaign, which included items such as a campaign anthem and "Thank You" banners. Piñera's banners and billboards have carried statements throughout the country such as "Delinquents, your party is over," and "Small businesses, Big opportunities". Piñera's campaign released a featuring a male gay couple, something never seen before in a presidential campaign run in Chile. Amongst his promises were increasing education rates and improving international relations with the neighboring country of Perú.
Piñera's victory meant a shift towards the right, breaking two-decades of center-left political leadership and becoming the first elected right-wing leader in 52 years.
On 28 January, Piñera suspended his membership in National Renewal, becoming unofficially an independent. RN's bylaws require successful presidential candidates from the party to renounce their association in order to govern the country fairly, foremost with the interest of the people, not with the interest of a political party or particular political philosophy.

Private to public transition

Piñera became the first billionaire to be sworn into the Chilean Presidency. He offered to sell his shares in major corporations before being sworn in on 11 March 2010, in order to avoid conflicts of interest. Piñera has placed US$400 million in blind trusts.
The Monday following Piñera's election, expectations of sale from his largest holdings created a surge in trade of Axxion and LAN shares, causing three brief suspensions in the Santiago Stock Exchange in order to ease trade. Axxion shares more than tripled before falling 39% on Friday, 22 January. Bachelet's Finance Minister Andrés Velasco urged Piñera to get the sale "sorted out quickly." The value of Piñera's interest in Axxion was estimated at 700 million dollars USD, of his 1.2 billion dollar USD fortune at the beginning of that week.
On 5 February, Piñera confirmed plans to sell his 26.3% stake in LAN airlines at an extraordinary shareholders' meeting for his main holding company, Axxion. Under the pact, Axxion shareholders have agreed to fix the price of the sale, estimated at US$1.5 billion. The Cueto family, who at that point held 25.5% of LAN through their holding company Costa Verde Aeronáutica, had the first option to purchase the stake. On 18 February, Axxion posted a statement on their website confirming the sale of a 21.18% stake in LAN Airlines to the Cueto family for US$1.23 billion. Announcement regarding the sale of the remaining shares was pending until March 2010, when the whole package left Piñera's hands.
, Santiago, 23 March 2019
Piñera sold his 9.7% stake in the upscale private hospital Clinica Las Condes at a price of 25,113 CLP per share through his holding company Bancard on Tuesday, 16 February. The total sale of the 792,000 shares grossed US$37.85 million and was purchased by the brokerage firm Celfin. The proceeds from the sale will go to paying off Bancard debt.
, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, outside 10 Downing Street, London
Piñera announced on February he had the intention to transfer 100% of his stake in Chilevisión to a non-for-profit organization called Fundación Cultura y Sociedad, of which he is owner. The foundation's board will include some of the station's current executives. Under that proposal, Piñera maintains the right to remove and replace the foundation's president at any given time. Cristián Patricio Larroulet Vignau, current Minister of the Secretariat of the Presidency of Chile, stated that Piñera was honoring his promise of removing himself from private corporations, as Chilevision will become the property of a non-profit organization. MP Cristián Monckeberg, stated there is no law obligating Piñera to do otherwise and thus this decision is legally legitimate.. The option above finally did not take place, Piñera decided to sell the TV station, and after a failed attempt in May 2010 with the Linzor Capital investment fund, the President announced it sold Chilevisión to Time Warner, in late August 2010.
Piñera said he won't sell his 12.5% stake in Blanco y Negro, company that owns the nation's popular soccer team Colo-Colo. He has stated, "We want big things and not only achieve local victories. The idea is to return the Copa Libertadores to Chile. That is our great goal." Although he will remain part owner, he will take no administrative duties or role while President.

Council of Ministers

Piñera announced what he calls his "cabinet of unity" on Tuesday, 9 February 2010, at 18:00 hours, in Chile's National Historical Museum. The list of names was presented the previous day to the leader of the National Renewal Party, Carlos Larraín, and the leader of the Independent Democratic Union, Juan Antonio Coloma. The cabinet is made up of 16 men and 6 women, with an average age of 49. Amongst Piñera's nominees is Jaime Ravinet, who is defense minister of the current president's cabinet and a former member of the Christian Democratic Party, from which he resigned upon accepting Piñera's cabinet offer. Also a nominee is Cristián Larroulet, who was an economic planning adviser under Pinochet.
During his first official meeting with his Council of Ministers on Wednesday, 10 February, Piñera issued a formal memorandum calling upon all members to renounce their positions in all private companies by 28 February in order to avoid conflicts of interest. The memorandum also said that in regards to national heritage, secretaries of state whose affiliation with companies having direct receipt of fiscal monies must either remove themselves from those associations or honor the restrictions of their competitors. Ten of his 22 ministers have involvement in companies with significant financial means.

2017 presidential elections

On 17 December 2017, Sebastián Piñera was elected president of Chile for a second term. He received 36% of the votes, the highest percentages among all 8 candidates in the 2017 elections. In the second round, Piñera faced Alejandro Guillier, a television news anchor who represented Bachelet's New Majority coalition. Piñera won the elections with 54% of the votes.

First presidency (2010–2014)

Piñera was sworn in as the 34th President of the Republic of Chile on 11 March 2010, in a ceremony held in a plenary session of the National Congress in Valparaíso. In the same ceremony, Piñera's Cabinet ministers were sworn in. The ceremony was also marked by a 6.9 Mw earthquake and subsequent aftershocks that upset the invitees. Shortly after, the National Congress building was evacuated due to a tsunami alert that proved to be false a couple of hours later. On 12 October 2010, Piñera rallied his countrymen in the rescue of 33 trapped miners, all of whom were rescued after 70 days following a mining accident. "Chile will never be the same", he said to the miners' foreman, Luis Urzúa, as he greeted Piñera, in a broadcast carried live across the globe. Despite much goodwill in Chile following this, many Chileans are still waiting on Piñera to rectify anti-terrorism laws in Chile which effectively mean the indigenous Mapuche people can be dealt with as "terrorists". This matter has led to hunger strikes which started before the mining disaster, and are set to continue afterwards.
In January 2011 he faced the protest in Magallanes Region in response to a proposed increase in the price of natural gas there by 16.8%. The protests left more than two thousand cars isolated while trying to cross from the Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego to the province of Santa Cruz through Chilean territory. Another 1,500 tourists were left without movement in Torres del Paine National Park after routes to Puerto Natales and El Calafate were cut. In consequence, on 14 January, Minister Secretary General of Government Ena von Baer announced changes in Sebastián Piñera's government cabinet, including the resignation of Ricardo Raineri as Energy Minister. Laurence Golborne became Mining and Energy Minister, on 16 January.
In March 2011, President Piñera led a state visit to Spain to boost relations between the two countries. While in Spain, President and Mrs Piñera, with Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia, opened the exhibition ”Don Qui. El Quijote de Matta”, at the Cervantes Institute of Madrid.
Amidst the severe 2011 Chilean student protests Piñera shuffled his cabinet and removed Joaquín Lavín from the post of minister of education. With respect to the protest, Piñera has defended for-profit activity in education and proposed to legalize it, rejecting the students' demands for the public ownership of educational establishments. During August 2011, Piñera's public approval declined precipitously amidst continuous protests, to the extent that some polls indicated that he was the least popular Chilean leader since Augusto Pinochet. His approval ratings dropped to as low as 22% according to a CERC survey. As such, Piñera's chances of passing sought reforms were seen as remote.
As president, Piñera expressed support for the Argentine claim on the Falkland Islands, referring to "the unrenounceable rights of Argentina on the islands".
In March 2012, Piñera visited Vietnam with the intention of increasing cooperation between the two countries in general and with Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's most populous and largest economic hub, in particular. HCM City also called for a Chilean sister city while receiving Piñera on 23 March. The visit included the signing of a bilateral trade agreement and several cooperation pacts in education, tourism, culture and finance.

Criticism

Early in 2012 physicist Frank Duarte sharply criticized Piñera's performance in the handling of the Chilean–Peruvian maritime dispute at The Hague, deemed as favoring commercial interests over the interest of the Chilean people, and called for Chile's withdrawal from The Hague. Following the adverse ruling against Chile in 2014, several political figures in Chile, from a variety of political parties, also called for Chile's withdrawal from The Hague that would, in addition, imply a withdrawal from the Pact of Bogota.
In December 2011 during a state visit to Mexico a joke made by Piñera where he compared women with politicians caused uproar in Chile, sparking criticism from his own minister Carolina Schmidt who said of the joke that it was "hurting to many women". In the joke Piñera said that "when a lady says "no" it means maybe, when she says maybe it means yes and when she says yes she is not a lady." The Chilean Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence called the joke "misogynic" and "a shame for the whole country". Previously on a state visit to Peru in 2011 Piñera received criticism for his informal style after he revealed to Peruvian president-elect Ollanta Humala that he was a descendant of the Inca Huayna Capac. Senator Jorge Pizarro criticized Piñera's comment to Ollanta Humala, calling for more careful and respectful attitudes.

Second presidency (2018–present)

On 17 December, Piñera won the second round of the Chilean General election, defeating the left wing candidate Alejandro Guillier to become President-Elect. Piñera took office for a second time on 11 March 2018, succeeding the outgoing Michelle Bachelet.
Environmental NGOs accuse the government of yielding to pressure from the mining lobby in an attempt to thwart any draft legislation. In 2018, Sebastián Piñera buried an initiative to ban industrial activities near glaciers. In 2019, a draft law from the ranks of the opposition caused tensions. It is supposed to convert glaciers and their surrounding environment "into protected areas, prohibiting any intervention except scientific and that can benefit sustainable tourism". At least 44 mining projects are likely to be completed between 2019 and 2028.
In May 2018, his government adopted "The Women's Agenda" in response to massive feminist demonstrations, which combined a conservative social vision and economic liberalism.

Cabinet

In January 2018, Piñera unveiled his cabinet to harsh criticism: his interior minister, Andrés Chadwick, was a vocal supporter of Pinochet dictatorship, which had previously appointed him president of the Catholic University Students Federation. In 2012 Chadwick expressed "deep repentance" for this support after discovering "over the years" serious human rights violations committed by the dictatorship, while defending the regime on other grounds.
Chadwick and justice minister Hernán Larraín were also "supporters and defenders of the secretive German enclave Colonia Dignidad, which was established by the fugitive Nazi officer and paedophile Paul Schäfer in the early 60s". Colonia Dignidad was used by Pinochet security officials to torture and murder opponents of the regime.
Other appointees with ties to the Pinochet includes mining minister Baldo Prokurica, a governor in the Pinochet government.

Response to 2019–2020 Chilean protests

In response to the widespread protests that broke out across Chile in October 2019, Piñera declared a state of emergency on 18 October, authorizing the deployment of Chilean Army forces across the main regions to enforce order and prevent the destruction of public property, and invoked before the courts the Ley de Seguridad del Estado against dozens of detainees. As a result, Piñera has been heavily criticized, decreasing his approval ratio down to 9% by October 24th, according to a poll by Active Research., although it slowly recovered back up to 13% by June 1st 2020, against 73% disapproval. This consistent low level of support has been attributed to losing support from officials due to failure to restore order and enforce the rule of law. On 12 December 2019 the National Congress rejected an opposition led motion to impeach him. The impeachment resolution accused him of failure to protect human rights in relation to the protests.
In response to the unrest Piñera removed Chadwick as Interior and Public Security Minister on October 28, 2019 asigning instead Gonzalo Blumel. On December 11 Chadwick was impeached for his role in the protests, including the many eye injuries attained by protesters. Chadwick is effectively banned to hold public office for five years.

Response to COVID-19 Pandemic

Under Piñera's leadership, Chile has had one of the largest outbreaks of COVID-19 in the world. As of July 2, 2020, it has had recorded 284,541 cases of COVID-19 and 5,920 deaths from COVID-19, the third-highest totals for each in South America. Only Brazil and Peru have more of each. In response, Piñera has banned events with more than 500 people and issued lockdown orders in certain areas of the country, most notably the Santiago Metropolitan Region

Public image

Piñera has often publicly been associated with bad luck. The BBC has listed a series of situations of "bad luck" concerning Piñera's presidency: the 2010 Maule earthquake followed by another quake during Piñera's inauguration ceremony, the mining accident of 2010, the 2010 Santiago prison fire, the 2011 Puyehue-Cordón Caulle eruption and the 2012 wildfires.
José Mujica, president of Uruguay, stated Piñera's low approval ratings might be caused by a lack of "glamour".
In April 2012 The Economist described Piñera as being considered an "inept politician" by both the opposition and supporters. The Chilean government responded by stating that The Economist's comment was disrespectful. His lapses, errors and inconveniences have been labelled "piñericosas" in Chile.
In June 2013, after visiting President Obama in the White House, he said, "I'm going to sit at the President of the United States' desk," breaking the White House's political protocols. Alfredo Moreno Charme, Minister of Foreign Affairs, said "How many other presidents have done the same?" and Obama responded, "This is the only one," causing laughter between those there. Piñera then justified his abrupt actions by stating his daughter was born in the United States.

Use of bellicose rhetoric

During the 2019–20 Chilean protests Piñera made himself known for the use of a bellicose language. When Piñera addressed the nation on the evening of 20 October during the height of the unrest he remarked that the country was "at war with a powerful and relentless enemy" and announced that the state of emergency would be extended across much of the country. Some opposition politicians described his rhetoric as "irresponsible", while a Latin America editor for BBC News Online expressed concern about the impact his words would have on the protesters and on the chances for meaningful dialogue. Hours shortly after the President's speech, chief of national defense Javier Iturriaga del Campo spoke against this declaration, asserting that he was "content" and "not at war with anyone".
However the use of bellicose rhetoric can be traced back to at least 2018 when Piñera begun his second government. He has referred to a variety of subjects like drug trafficking, terrorism and organised crime as a "powerful and relentless enemies". Besides this Piñera has made frequent use of words like "battle", "conquest", "defeat" and "combat" in his verbal communication. The use of such language is not unique to Piñera but has also been heard from European right-wing populists and George W. Bush. According to economist Carlos Tromben who studied the political discourse of Piñera, the aim of this rhetoric is to rally the nation behind what is perceived as a common interest, but the success of this has been variable. Tromben also view the bellicose rhetoric as a defensive communicational strategy aimed to gain time for a "counterattack".

Personal life

Piñera married Cecilia Morel in 1973. They were neighbours in the Avenida Américo Vespucio, Santiago. They have four children, born in 1975, 1978, 1982 and 1984. All of them have university degrees. Piñera is also a member of Washington D.C.-based think tank, the Inter-American Dialogue.

Honours

National honours

Actor Bob Gunton portrays Piñera in the 2015 film The 33, directed by Patricia Riggen.