Chilean students resume protests amid corruption scandal

Some 60,000 students and supporters demanding education reform marched through downtown Santiago Thursday, as the center-left government grapples with a major corruption scandal.

The protest, part of a student movement launched in 2011 demanding an affordable and better public education system, aimed to put pressure on Chilean President Michelle Bachelet to consolidate the reforms she had promised during her election campaign.

Bachelet, who requires the backing of Congress to overhaul education, has been hard hit by a scandal involving her family, after the president's son Sebastian Davalos and his wife, Natalia Compagnon, were accused of influence peddling.

"We are convinced there's no reason why Chilean politics should be corrupt, like it is now. We have to defend democracy, since it's the only thing that can bring back the ... trust of the people," Valentina Vargas, president of the Student Federation of the University of Chile, told reporters.

Ricardo Paredes, a dissident student spokesman, said: "Today, we secondary school students are once again proposing education that is at the service of the Chilean people and students."

The country's conservative political opposition is also mired in corruption scandals, one involving a bank and another involving a mining firm.

Davalos, who held an official post as the presidency's director of charitable works, tried to ride out the scandal, but was finally forced to resign after both conservative opposition groups and members of the ruling center-left coalition criticized his behavior. Endi