Bachelet represents a new era for Chile and Latin America
By Francoise Kadri
AFP
SANTIAGO
Petroleumworld.com 01 16 06
Michelle Bachelet is a socialist, an agnostic and a single mother
-- hardly the traditional profile for a leader of Chile, a conservative
Catholic bastion in South America.
Yet Bachelet, 54, will become the country's first woman president
after a runoff vote on Sunday, in which she garnered 53.5 percent
of the vote and defeated conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera.
Bachelet ran as the candidate for the center-left Concertacion,
the coalition of leftist and centrist parties that has governed
Chile since the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet ended
in 1990.
"I am just a Chilean woman no more and no less than millions
of other Chileans," Bachelet said. "I work, I take care
of my home and I drop my daughter off at school. But I'm also
a Chilean that feels a calling to fight for justice and for public
service."
According to people who work with her, Bachelet is a workaholic
who still manages to enjoy parties and dancing.
Bachelet is separated from her husband -- divorce only became
legal in 2004 -- and has three children from two different relationships.
A pediatrician, she served as health minister before becoming
Latin America's first female defence minister in 2002.
Born 29 September 1951 in Santiago, Bachelet studied medicine
and joined the Socialist Youth as a teenager. Her father, Air
Force General Alberto Bachelet, was a close adviser to the socialist
president Salvador Allende who was toppled by Augusto Pinochet
on September 11, 1973.
Tortured while in prison, Bachelet's father died six months later.
Secret police whisked her and her mother off to Villa Grimaldi,
a known torture center, in January 1975.
"Torture is terrible, especially from the psychological point
of view, because it is so humiliating," she said of her experience.
The two women were later freed and fled, first to Australia and
then to East Germany, where Bachelet completed her medical studies.
Bachelet, already the mother of a young son, Sebastian, returned
to Chile in 1979 but was prevented from practicing as a doctor
by the dictatorship.
She continued studying, specializing in pediatrics and public
health. Then in 1984 she gave birth to a daughter, Francesca.
But Bachelet also became aware of the isolation of the Chilean
military after Pinochet finally ended his dictatorship in 1990.
She studied military strategy in Santiago and later at the Inter-American
Defense College in Washington.
In 2000, President Ricardo Lagos made her health minister to carry
out a major reform of the sector.
Two years later, Bachelet became defence minister and on the 30th
anniversary of Pinochet's coup called for a national reconciliation
with the military.
The speech was the launch pad for her rise to power.
Bachelet has won over Chileans like Andres Chellew, the son of
an officer who took part in Pinochet's coup. He says Bachelet
represents the end of a political and economic era in Chile.
"She represents the middle class, Chile's reconciliation
with its military, she is opening a new chapter in our history.
The country is going to change a lot in the next four years even
if some people do not want this," he said.
AFP
01/15/06
Copyright
© 2006 AFP. All rights reserved
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