Chilean president Gabriel Boric replaced the mining minister today as part of his third cabinet reshuffle in 18 months toward improving fraught relations with the opposition and advancing the government's agenda.
The country's challenges demand that "we reach agreements … leave the trenches and put the good of Chile first," said Boric. Tax and pension reforms are at the top of the agenda.
No members of Boric's core political committee of six ministers were involved in the reshuffle which was aimed at replacing particularly unpopular or poor-performing ministers.
Mining minister Marcela Hernando, who was responsible for Chile's national lithium strategy, was replaced by Aurora Williams, a social democrat and former mining minister under center-left president Michelle Bachelet (2014-2018).
Boric highlighted the "consolidation of our national lithium policy and continuing to maintain Chilean mining's world leadership" as one of the tasks awaiting his new team.
New ministers of social development, education, culture and national assets were also announced.
Energy minister Diego Pardow, who is leading the transition and green hydrogen strategy to meet Chile's goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, remains in office.
The left-leaning Boric government has been hard hit recently by a wave of scandals involving central government and regional government entities directly awarding funds to politically related civil society organizations.
The crisis provided the right-wing opposition with the momentum to successfully push for the resignation last week of social development minister Giorgio Jackson who, together with Boric, rose to public prominence as a student leader in 2011.
Regarded as Boric's closest political ally, Jackson has not been directly implicated in the scandals although the party he founded, Revolucion Democratica, has.
Chile is the world's largest producer of copper and second largest of lithium, both key materials for the energy transition.
