Sebastián Piñera

About

Miguel Juan Sebastián Piñera Echenique is a Chilean politician and businessman. He was President of Chile between 2010 and 2014 and is president-elect of Chile in 2017.

History

Pinera was born December 1st, 1949 in Santiago, Chile.^[5] His father was the Chiléan Ambassador to the United States. Piñera enrolled in the Colegio del Verbo Divino ("Divine Word College"), from which he graduated in 1967. He attended graduate school at Harvard University and graduated with both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics. He was one of the creators of the Enterprising Women Foundation (Fundación Mujer Emprende), originally called The House of Youth (La Casa de la Juventud), which aims to assist in the development of young women of lower-income. He has also created Fundación Futuro, which aims to help Chilé's development of democracy. As a businessman, Pinera once owned all of Chilévision, and has had large shares of LAN Airlines and the football club Coto-Colo.

Political Career

Pinera was elected Senator for East Santiago, where he served between 1990 and 1998. He then joined the center-right National Renewal Party. In 1992, he attempted to be his party's nominee for President, but his campaign was halted after a tape revealed he had colluded with a journalist to corner his rival in a televised appearance.

Presidency

Pinera ran for President of Chile in the 2009–2010 election, and out-polled^[1] Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Marco Enríquez-Ominami and Jorge Arrate, all of whom were center-left candidates. In the December 13th, 2009 election, Piñera placed first in the results with 44.05% of the votes. Notably, after the election, Pinera's campaign released a national TV spot on YouTube featuring a male gay couple (shown below).

Pinera became the 35th President of the Republic of Chile on March 11th, 2010. During his presidency, he was a major figure in the rescue of 33 trapped miners. He faced severe protests in 2011 from Chilean students^[2] and removed Joaquín Lavín from the post of minister of education. Piñera has defended for-profit activity in education and proposed to legalize it, rejecting the students demands for the public ownership of educational establishments. He lost the presidency to Michelle Bachelet in the 2013 election.^[3]

Chilean Elections 2017

Piñera ran in the Chile Elections in 2017^[4] and defeated Alejandro Guillier, making him the President-elect of Chilé, to be swotn in March 11th, 2018.

Related Memes

Marepoto

After the 2010 Chile earthquake, on March 21st, Piñera made a speech mentioning the word Marepoto. Poto means "ass" in Chilé and other Latin American countries (shown below).

This led the speech and the word "Marepoto" to be parodied in multiple remixes (examples shown below).

Piñera Fall

On August 30th, 2013, Piñera fell among the rubble of the buildings built in the town of Bajos de Mena, Puente Alto (shown below).

A photographer recorded the exact moment of the accident, and his photographs quickly went viral and generated various edits (examples shown below).

Piñera in The Oval Office

On June 4th, 2013, during a visit to the White House and a meeting with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, Piñera left the protocol of the meeting, proceeding to sit at the Oval Office desk (shown below), leading to jokes about Pinera.

Search Interest

External References