Ricardo Lagos
Ricardo Lagos was president of Chile from 2000 to 2006, the first socialist since Allende, the economist who on a television programme in April 1988 had pointed his finger at the camera and told Pinochet that he would not be given another eight years of torture and murder, which no one had said on Chilean television before. As president he signed free-trade agreements with the United States, the European Union, South Korea and China, built the Santiago urban highways and the Transantiago buses. He made the health guarantee that gave every Chilean treatment for fifty-six conditions within a fixed time. He ended the appointed senators and Pinochet's senate seat by the constitutional reform of 2005, signing the new text in his own name. He received the Valech report of 2004 that recorded twenty-eight thousand cases of torture, for which he gave the survivors a pension. He was born in Santiago in 1938, studied law at the University of Chile and economics at Duke, taught, was Allende's ambassador-designate to Moscow when the coup came. He spent the dictatorship at the United Nations and in the opposition, founding the Party for Democracy in 1987 as a vehicle for socialists who could not use the name. He was Aylwin's education minister and Frei's public works minister, whose concessions built the roads. He won the coalition's primary of 1999 by forty points and the run-off of January 2000 against Lavin by two and a half. The government began in the Asian crisis's recession with unemployment at ten per cent and ended with growth at six and the copper price quadrupled. It also had the MOP-Gate scandal of bonuses paid to officials through consultancies, which cost him ministers. There was the refusal of a seat on the Security Council to vote for the Iraq war in 2003, which cost him nothing. He left office with seventy per cent approval and handed over to Bachelet, was the UN's special envoy for climate change, and ran for the presidency again in 2017 without reaching the ballot when his own party withdrew its support. He has spent the years since as the coalition's conscience, and its critic.
- Lived: 1938 CE – ?
- Nationality: Chilean
- Roles: president, politician
