Chile likely to elect first female president

[cal04]

Chileans go to the polls on Sunday and are expected to elect the South American country's first female president, a socialist who is leading in the race against a moderate conservative billionaire. Michelle Bachelet, a medical doctor and former defence minister who was imprisoned and tortured early in the 1973-1990 Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, has a 5-point lead over opposition candidate Sebastian Pinera, the latest poll showed. Chile has a reputation as a very conservative country and it legalised divorce only two years ago. A recent dramatic shift to more liberal social values has aided Bachelet, a separated mother of three. I

If she wins, Bachelet will be the fourth consecutive president from the centre-left coalition that formed in the 1980s to oppose Pinochet and has run the country of 16 million people since he stepped down in 1990. A Bachelet victory would also consolidate a shift to the left in Latin America, where different shades of leftists run Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela. A socialist will soon take office in Bolivia and a leftist is favoured to win Mexico's presidential election in July. Last month, Bachelet won 46 percent of the vote in a four-way first-round presidential election. It was short of the absolute majority she needed to avoid a January runoff against Pinera, 56, who came in second with 25 percent.

NO JITTERS ON WALL STREET
Bachelet pledges deep reforms to Chile's private pension system, which is admired around the world as a model but is considered expensive and inadequate at home.
While Latin American elections often give investors the jitters, Wall Street has taken Chile's presidential campaign in stride, confident that whoever wins will follow the prudent fiscal policies that have helped to make this the region's most stable economy.

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=6384104&cKey=1137299717000

If elected, Bachelet has said, at least half the members in her cabinet would be women. She has promised child care for low-income mothers and reforms of the country's pension system to provide broader coverage at a lower cost. "We can build a country where no one will be sentenced to live in poverty and where each day we will work toward an even freer society," Bachelet told 200,000 supporters in Santiago at a rally ending her campaign this past week.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/14/AR2006011401033.html

[w13rd0]

1. Does anyone recall...

...articles in various business journals a couple years back talking about how China and several European nations were courting Latin America? Gee, the next world war may just be the U.S. against the world. Who might we count as our allies? If this trend continues, the "War of the Americas" will become something more than just a common "pre-historical event" plot device in near future fiction.

[phusion]

3. seems about right

Evo Morales, the new President of Bolivia, traveled to China a week or so ago...

[FlemingsGhost]

2. South America is blossoming

It won't be long until Colombia tells us to fuck off.

Che's dream is alive and well.

Viva!

[mom cat]

11. I hope I live long enough to see it happen here too!

[Minstrel Boy]

4. "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country

go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important
for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." - Henry Kissinger

[phusion]

5. 'tis a beautiful thing, no?

Bachelet and her father were tortured by the Pinochet regime!

:headbang:

[Catrina]

6. Yes, it is and it gives me hope that one day, this country might

once again be a democracy where the people's interests are a priority. It may take a while, as it did there, but I bet there was a time when Bachelet and her father felt hopeless. I hope he is alive to witness her success and his country's. That is a beautiful story about justice prevailing.

[Peace Patriot]

7. I agree with you, Catrina! South America is showing the way!

One of the keys to this incredible blossoming of democracy in South America is TRANSPARENT, VERIFIABLE and highly monitored elections.

We can do that, too. We can have democracy right here in the birthplace of modern democracy.

Throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

Martin Luther King would approve!

[Judi Lynn]

8. I found an article which briefly explains what happened to her, her father

and mother, and boyfriend:

Story of Survival
That Bachelet is alive and able to run for office is a dramatic story of survival.

While socialist President Salvador Allende was in office, the U.S. government under Richard Nixon aided a military coup against him. After several attempts, the military took over on Sept. 11, 1973, and immediately began executing political and social activists.

In January 1975 Bachelet was arrested by a Chilean military squad. As a member of the outlawed Socialist Party, Bachelet was part of an underground resistance and one of thousands accused of being an enemy of the military government led by Army General Augusto Pinochet.

Bachelet found herself under surveillance and then the military sought to eliminate her.

But first the torture.

"It was horrifying," said Elizabeth Lira, a leading Chilean academic who has studied and researched human rights abuses in Chile. "You were arrested by 10 men, heavily armed. They smacked you, beat you, then half dressed in the middle of the night they threw you into a vehicle. Then you were packed into cells and trapped in a very small space."

"Our room had bars on the window," said Bachelet. "We had four or five bunks, and we were eight women. The beds were full, sometimes two women slept together, we didn't all fit . . . We were blindfolded all day, we took them off, but obviously when the guards arrived we lowered the blindfolds. If not, they beat us."

Father Accused of Helping Allende
The 1973-1990 Pinochet government killed approximately 3,000 Chileans. Many of them, including Bachelet's boyfriend, simply "disappeared" and their bodies have never been located.

Bachelet's father Alberto, a general in the Chilean Air Force, was accused of working with the socialist Allende government. He was tortured by his colleagues until his heart collapsed. He died in a public prison cell.

Bachelet's mother, Angela Jeria, was kidnapped together with her daughter and locked in a cage for five days without food. Their cellmates were raped by guards.
(snip/...)

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2532/context/cover/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think it should be interesting seeing _Bush dealing with someone who was tortured, and lost her father and boyfriend to torture, and murder, at the hands of Richard M. Nixon-assisted, murderous dictator Pinochet.

[David__77]

10. I hope she avenges these crimes.

She must continue the revolution began by Salvador Allende, unite and mobilize the left, destroy the neo-liberal model, and unite with the new emerging Latin American progressive pole.

[Catrina]

12. Peace Patriot, I agree ~ a sybolic tossing of voting machines into Boston

harbor might be a good idea ~ that visual might awaken many Americans to the thought that something is wrong. And they might begin to investigate, and shut off their propaganda machines for a while.

Judy Lynn, thanks for that article. The date of Allene's assassination is 9/11! What is it about this date that is so attractive to these people?

Wow, just her prevailing over the criminals who brought such misery to her country, is vengeance in itself. Isn't Pinochet still living? If so, I hope he is aware of this.

She sounds like an incredible woman. The article answers my question about her father. How sad, but no doubt the injustice of that death alone, served as motivation for her to never give up.

This is what the criminals never take into account. The people they torture today, may rise again tomorrow not cowed into submission, but even more determined than before to right the wrongs perpetrated against them. The power of the human spirit is one thing dictators always leave out of their dark equations. It has been the downfall of many of them.

What's happening in S. America is awesome! The US Empire is pre-occupied in the ME. This happened with other Empires, they simply cannot be everywhere, no matter how powerful they think they.

[theHandpuppet]

9. Oh, if we only had candidates like this one to vote for!!

Right on, Chile!

[zann725]

13. "Let's hear it for the girls!" (Women Prez....that is.)

We are SOOOO far behind...her in the 'advanced' Western World.

[Vidar]

14. It seems that South America is the worl's hope at this point.

[cal04]

15. first results expected around 4:30 EST

The first polling stations to open in the morning began closing at 4:00 p.m. (2 p.m. EST/1900 GMT) and the first results are expected at around 6:30 p.m. (4:30 p.m. EST/2130

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-01-15T201350Z_01_N14130550_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHILE-ELECTION.xml

[cal04]

16. update for anyone watching this Bachelet takes lead

Chile's Bachelet takes lead in presidential vote


Chile's Michelle Bachelet led the presidential election on Sunday, with most of the vote counted, looking poised to become her country's first woman president.

Bachelet, the socialist candidate for Chile's ruling center-left coalition, had 53.22 percent of the votes, with 67 percent of polling stations counted, the government Electoral Service said.

Sebastian Pinera, the billionaire, moderate conservative candidate from a rightist alliance, had 46.77 percent of the vote.

http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2006-01-15T212932Z_01_N15199599_RTRIDST_0_CHILE-ELECTION-VOTES-URGENT.XML

[gorbal]

17. Newsflash: She Won

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/01/15/chile.vote/

[Judi Lynn]

18. What a beautiful article! We don't get a lot of them, do we?

From your link:

Bachelet spent five years in exile after the 1973 coup that brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power. Her father, an air force general, was tortured and killed after the coup, and Bachelet herself was tortured before being sent into exile in Australia.

She completed her training as a pediatrician in East Germany and served as health minister in Chile's center-left government before becoming defense minister.

"What I want, and have and will always work for, is to build a society in which what happened to me and so many Chileans can never be repeated," she said recently.
(snip)

We really should start a pool to guess the first day some freep troll shows up here bitching about how much he hates her "dictatorial" ways.

Best wishes for a long, accident-free, very healthy life for this excellent survivor of right-wing greed and murder gone big-time through the endeavors of Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

Have we already had Evo Morales haters, or is it still too early?