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Chile’s Boric leaves office, calls for unity after split with successor over China cable
Undersea fibre-optic cable project linking Chile to Hong Kong enraged US, causing dispute that defined Gabriel Boric’s final weeks in office
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Igor Patrickin Santiago
Chilean President Gabriel Boric left La Moneda presidential palace for the last time on Wednesday, ending a four-year term with a call for national unity that most observers took as a reference to the Chinese undersea cable dispute that defined his final weeks in office.
“I wish success to the incoming government, success for Chile, and may our homeland always come first, above any interest, above any disagreement,” Boric said from the palace courtyard, where he arrived with his partner, Paula Carrasco, shortly after 8am.
Boric handed power to Jose Antonio Kast, a far-right lawyer and former congressman who won the November election with 58 per cent of the vote. Kast is seen as ideologically close to US President Donald Trump and was among the first Latin American leaders to congratulate him after his 2024 victory.
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The Chilean president’s remarks calling for union “above any interest … [and] disagreement” came after a weeks-long public feud between the two men over a Chinese cable that almost derailed the transition entirely.
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The dispute centred on the Chile-China Express, a fibre-optic cable project backed by China Mobile International that would have linked the Chilean port city of Concon to Hong Kong.
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