CHILE: Cabinet Shuffle

CHILE - In Brief 09 Aug 2018 by Robert Funk

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Although he only shuffled three cabinet posts on Thursday, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera sent a broader message; he is admitting that the honeymoon is over.The two ministers to go were Education Minister Gerardo Varela and Culture Minister Alejandra Perez. Environment Minister Marcela Cubillos was moved to the Education portfolio.Varela was probably the most obvious candidate in any cabinet shuffle, which might seem surprising on the face of it. He was probably the minister who was faced with the weakest student movement in years. Yet his frequent outbursts and PR gaffes did him in. Early on, he bragged about having to buy his sons lots of condoms, as they are ‘champions’. The most recent was his assertion that public schools facing serious infrastructure problems should hold bingos in order to finance them. The effect on his, and the government’s, popularity was swift. Varela has been replaced by Marcela Cubillos, who had been in the Environment Ministry. She is a far smoother political operator than was Varela, although her right-wing stance will not do much to placate student demands. But as the student movement has not regained the momentum of recent years, this could be less of a problem than it might have been.Carolina Schmidt takes over at Environment. She was brought in from the private sector, but had served as Minister for Women in Piñera’s first administration, where she proved to be a popular and effective minister. Piñera’s choice to replace Minister Perez in Culture is interesting, in that like Foreign Minister Ampuero, Mauricio Rojas is a convert. Exiled in his youth, Rojas turned away from his Marxist origins and eventually became a member of parli...