SEBASTIÁN PIÑERA SWORN IN AS CHILE'S NEW PRESIDENT

While a series of seven ominously powerful earthquake aftershocks shook central Chile today, multi-billionaire and Harvard-trained conservative businessman Sebastián Piñera was sworn in as the country's new president. Today's aftershocks (the biggest with a magnitude of 6.9, downsized from an earlier estimate of 7.2) caused the Chilean navy to issue a new tsunami warning, and seismologists said that now Chile can expect to feel aftershocks from the aftershocks. As a precaution, authorities evacuated the congressional building in coastal Valparaiso where the inaguration took place following the ceremony.

Piñera, shown above with his wife Cecelia in a 2005 presidential campaign flyer which I picked up in December of that year when I saw him in person at an outdoor political rally in downtown Los Angeles, Chile, was defeated by Michelle Bachelet for the presidency back then. Now he has come back, handily winning the new election held in January with the promise to "make Chile the best country in the world." Of course, now his number one priority will be to engineer the reconstruction of a badly damaged nation.

He is Chile's first right wing conservative president since the leftist coalition took power at the end of the Pinochet dictatorship twenty years ago. His election victory now puts Chile's relatively small business elite in direct power, a fact that encourages many Chileans who look to him to create jobs for the people. However there are some in Chile, particularly many in the labor unions, who promise to initiate crippling strikes if Piñera carries out the partial privatization of Codelco, the nation's massive state-run copper conglomerate, that he had promised during the campaign. Since he lacks a legislative majority he will likely find it necessary to compromise with the left to move forward. The center-left coalition for its part, has moderated its tone since the devastating earthquakes and has said that it will support Piñera's reconstruction programs.

The AP photo at right shows Piñera wearing the Chilean presidential sash at today's swearing-in ceremony in Valparaiso, Chile. Personally, I hope that the new administration will prove to be a successful one for Chile, and I extend my most sincere congratulations to President Sebastián Piñera and wish him all the best.

[Note: I originally had said I would now go forward with my retrospective, but I felt that today's presidential inauguration deserved some comment. I will resume my retrospective with my next post.]