Chile mourns former President Sebastián Piñera

By James Blears

The 74-year-old businessman, who changed the course of his life and a country after twice becoming the President of Chile, has died in a helicopter crash in the vacation resort of Lago Ranco in the south of the country.

Chile’s Minister of the Interior, Carolina Toha, has confirmed Sebastián Piñera’s death. Three other people were injured in the accident.

Mr. Piñera was a billionaire, a professor in universities, and a consultant at the World Bank and also the Inter American Bank. He created and established one of the largest credit card companies in Chile.

He used his economic talents, acumen, and flair to engender significant and rapid economic growth, during his first Presidential term between 2010 and 2014.

During his second Presidency from 2018 to 2022, there were mass protests against disparity between wealth and poverty, after which the government pledged to create a new Constitution to replace the one drafted during the Pinochet dictatorship.

It’s still being formulated and amended after being rejected by voters in a Referendum.

In 2010 he coordinated and led the rescue of thirty three miners, trapped deep below the Atacama Desert for sixty-nine days. They were saved.

He ended his Presidency with the achievement of having created more than a million new jobs.