Vallejo remains a vice-president but her replacement Gabriel Boric will call the shots in the Confech and he is already talking about a probably overambitious strategy to expand the movement from its focus on education to a larger range of issues “that are excluded from the current political scene”, such as healthcare and the environment. Vallejo’s defeat to Boric owes in large part to her failure to prevent congress from approving Piñera’s education reforms for 2012 after she controversially underlined her determination to prevent a political accord on the matter. Despite her best efforts, the senate approved the budget, although the left-wing opposition Concertación abstained from voting on the education bill on the grounds that it fell short of student demands. It then narrowly passed in the chamber of deputies (58-55) when independent deputies threw their weight behind the government’s proposals.
The upshot is that education spending will increase by 10% to US$12.1bn (the lower chamber increased this by US$420m) in 2012 on this year’s level, including a big 26% increase in higher education spending. This is broadly the same as budgetary spending increases on education under the previous administration of Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010). Students expressed their profound disappointment at the sum and also the preservation of the status quo ante regarding the education system.
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