Sebastián Piñera biography
Sebastián Piñera, in full Miguel Juan Sebastián Piñera Echenique, (born December 1, 1949, Santiago, Chile), Chilean businessman and politician who served as president of Chile (2010–14) and was elected to a second time period in December 2017.
When Piñera was a child, his household moved to the United States, the place his father, a civil servant, spent 4 years working for the Chilean Economic Development Agency (Corporación de Fomento de la Producción; CORFO). The household returned to Chile within the mid-Nineteen Fifties, then left once more in 1965, when Piñera’s father was appointed Chile’s ambassador to Belgium. Piñera studied on the Catholic University of Chile, receiving a level in industrial engineering in 1971. With the help of a Fulbright scholarship, he returned to the United States to proceed his research, receiving a grasp’s diploma and a Ph.D. (1976) in economics from Harvard University. He served on the economics school of the Catholic University of Chile all through the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s. He additionally taught on the University of Chile and the Valparaíso Business School (now Adolfo Ibáñez University).
Piñera labored within the consulting and banking sectors previous to his founding of the massively profitable Bancard within the late Nineteen Seventies. The firm, which launched credit score playing cards to Chile, made him a billionaire. He additionally held massive stakes in different corporations, together with LAN Chile, the nation’s nationwide airline; a non-public hospital; and the Colo Colo soccer (soccer) staff. Among Piñera’s different endeavours was the creation in 1993 of the Fundación Futuro, a nonprofit group involved with water preservation and renewable vitality that additionally established Tantauco Park, an ecological park on the Chilean island of Chiloé.
Piñera started his political profession in 1989, managing the unsuccessful presidential marketing campaign of Hernán Büchi, former finance minister of Chilean navy dictator Augusto Pinochet (1974–90). That identical yr Piñera was elected senator for East Santiago, a seat he held till 1998. He made an unsuccessful run for the presidency in 2005, because the candidate of the National Renewal get together. When he ran once more in 2009, he superior to the second-round runoff election, through which his opponent was former president Eduardo Frei (1964–70), the candidate of the Coalition of Parties for Democracy (Concertación de los Partidos por la Democracia; CPD), as a result of in style incumbent president Michelle Bachelet was constitutionally prohibited from serving a consecutive time period. Piñera’s victory within the election ended 20 years of CPD rule.
On February 27, 2010, lower than two weeks earlier than Piñera was set to take workplace, a magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck Chile (see Chile earthquake of 2010). While Bachelet oversaw preliminary reduction efforts, Piñera toured catastrophe websites and commenced talking on the report because the Chilean chief. Piñera’s inauguration ceremony, on March 11, was punctuated by two highly effective aftershocks. In August 2010, 33 Chilean miners grew to become trapped in a mine collapse, and, following their rescue 69 days later, Piñera’s recognition surged. However, his authorities confronted a significant problem in May 2011, when massive pupil protests broke out demanding reform of the outdated, underfunded, and class-based public training system. Efforts to quell the unrest—together with cupboard adjustments—largely failed, and in 2012 labour teams started protesting. Despite Chile’s continued financial development, the nation skilled nice financial inequality, which fueled the unrest and brought on additional dissatisfaction with Piñera’s authorities. Barred from in search of a consecutive time period, he left workplace in 2014, succeeded by Bachelet.