Jorge Arrate

Jorge Felix Arrate MacNiven (born May 1, 1941 in Santiago de Chile ) is a Chilean politician . He is the leader of the united left in Chile and was the candidate of the Communist Party of Chile for the 2009 presidential election . Between 1992 and 1999 he was Minister under Presidents Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle . He was first education minister, later labor minister and finally from 1998 to 1999 government spokesman with the rank of minister.

life and work

Arrate began in 1958 at the Universidad de Chile to study economics, which he completed in 1964. He was then able to get a scholarship to Harvard University . He finished his studies with an MBA . He started a dissertation for a Ph.D. at the University of Chile, which he did not finish. After the coup in Chile in 1973 and Augusto Pinochet's takeover , Arrate fled the country. During this time Arrate was chairman of the Committee of the Chileans in Exile. Until 1987 he lived in exile in East Berlin , Rome and Rotterdam . Arrate is considered a critic of Augusto Pinochet's economic policy. In particular , he criticized the ideas and concepts of the Chicago Boys and Miguel Kast as socially unbalanced.

After serving in the government, he was the Chilean Ambassador to Argentina from 2000 to 2003 . In 2007 he announced that the time of the Concertación alliance was drawing to a close; In 2009 he resigned from the Communist Party. He stood as a candidate for the extra-parliamentary left-wing alliance Juntos Podemos Mas in the 2009 presidential election. In his demands he followed the models of the left Latin American governments: he advocated a re-establishment of the Chilean state, which would make a new constitution necessary. He also demanded the complete nationalization of copper, Chile's most important export. By banning outsourcing to intermediate companies, he wanted to strengthen workers' rights. Like his competitors Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle and Marco Enríquez-Ominami , he gave priority to education and health, although his demands remained vague. As the only one of the four presidential candidates, he spoke out clearly in favor of demilitarizing southern Chile.

Arrate, who was considered a blatant outsider, achieved only 6.21 percent of the vote in the first ballot and thus landed in fourth place. The two remaining candidates Eduardo Frei and Sebastián Piñera then vied for his supporters. Arrate himself tended more towards Frei, but did not want to issue him a “blank check” and was open to discussions with him.

Web links

Commons : Jorge Arrate - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Dinah Stratenwerth: On to the usual runoff election: The presidential elections in Chile are going into a second round. In: Latin America News No. 427 January 2010, accessed July 3, 2015 .
↑ Winfried Jung / Martin Meyer: Clear victory for Pinera in the first ballot. In: KAS country reports. December 15, 2009, accessed January 14, 2012 .

personal data
SURNAME	Arrate, Jorge
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Arrate MacNiven, Jorge Felix (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Chilean politician
DATE OF BIRTH	May 1, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH	Santiago de Chile

[Lateinamerikanachrichten-1] Dinah Stratenwerth: On to the usual runoff election: The presidential elections in Chile are going into a second round. In: Latin America News No. 427 January 2010, accessed July 3, 2015 .

[KAS-2] Winfried Jung / Martin Meyer: Clear victory for Pinera in the first ballot. In: KAS country reports. December 15, 2009, accessed January 14, 2012 .