Ricardo Lagos Escobar (born March 2, 1938) is a retired Chilean academic and politician who served as President of Chile from 1998 until 2002, when he was constitutionally prohibited from succeeding himself. Escobar was a member of the UDP, making him the first candidate from the political left elected since the fall of Communism in Chile. Elected at a time of high unemployment and economic instability as a result of eight years of denationalization under successive right-wing governments, Lagos ran on a platform of moderate government market capitalism and improving government-sponsored social programs which had decayed over the past two and a half decades to make them not only cheaper but also more effective. Lagos, while having been a member of the Communist government, governed as a re