Chile Protests: Education Minister Felipe Bulnes Steps Down

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Chile's student protest movement claimed its second education minister on Thursday as Felipe Bulnes stepped down, citing personal reasons, and conservative President Sebastian Pinera named a replacement.

Chile's government also confirmed that Agriculture Minister Jose Antonio Galilea was stepping down as well and would be replaced by National Agriculture Association chief Luis Mayol. Bulnes will be replaced by economist Harald Bayer.

The resignations come as a new poll shows that Pinera's approval rating has plunged to 23 percent, partly due to a long and bitter strike by students for reforms to Chile's education system. The rating was the lowest since democracy returned to Chile two decades ago.

The poll by the Center for Public Studies surveyed 1,559 people across Chile with a margin for error of 3 percentage points.

A poll by the same company a year ago showed Pinera with a 44 percent approval rating.

Bulnes, who said he is resigning for personal reasons, is the second education minister to step down since Pinera took office in March 2010. He took over from Joaquin Lavin in July, two months after protests began closing hundreds of schools and led to sometimes violent clashes with police.

Economy Minister Pablo Longueira, who announced the resignations, expressed regret and called Bulnes "one of the most brilliant figures I have known."

As education minister, Bulnes failed to end the long protest by high school and university students. A negotiation process he initiated broke off shortly after it began when the government said it would not discuss free education for all students.

Students leaders appeared ready to give Bayer the benefit of the doubt, though they expressed concern that he is an academic without political experience.

Student leader Noam Titelman at Chile's Catholic University said "what matters is not changing faces, but changing government policies."

Chile's university students returned to classes in late November, pressured by a government threat to cut funding to state universities, but protest leaders said they would continue demonstrations in the new year.

The student protests have succeeded in getting the government to increase scholarships and lower interest rates on student loans. But Pinera's government has refused to consider the deep reforms, including the elimination of for-profit universities and free tuition, that protesters had demanded.

The appointment of Mayol as agriculture minister generated criticism from farm groups who said he represented agri-business interests.

Mayol's appointment shows that "this is a government of businessmen for businessmen," said Socialist Party President Osvaldo Andrade.

Comments

[structurequity]

10:36 AM on 12/30/2011

Privatization of the last frontier for capitalism is what stands as reality now. Our children indebted for life in order to get an education. an education that is needed by them but also by our society; Is there not a obligation on the part of a society to educate our children as they come of age and begin their commitment to that capitalistic society. if not then take it down!

[filipfla]

11:42 PM on 12/29/2011

In 1970 the tuition for the City University of New York was less than 75 dollars a semester for most of the campuses. Now it is nearly 6000 dollars a semester. U.S. students need to follow the trend and demand a better deal for their schooling.

[DoctorBri1776]

12:23 AM on 12/30/2011

As a graduate of Queens College and then a faculty member from 1968-1976, the City University was forced to give up FREE TUITION which had been the case from the inception of the municipal colleges which in turn provided a great leg up for the children and grandchildren of New York City's many immigrants and a great boon to the brain gain of the city. What has happened since, despite massive protests at times, is a kind of "privitization" model whereby students pay sums completely outside of the economic demographics of that great city, leaving school with ridiculous debt that they must bear for years. What kind of civil society can endure under such conditions? My niece, now 40, is still paying off her college loans almost twenty years after her graduation. Meanwhile, two invasions, of Afghanistan and Iraq, both violating international law, has consumed over a trillion dollars in taxpayer money and for what? Whose pockets have been lined in the process? Whose life and health has been dramatically and tragically affected. Whose future is and has been stolen. Support the 99%