Michelle Bachelet
Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria (born September 29 1951) is a Chilean Socialist politician and a former Health Minister and Defense Minister of Chilean president Ricardo Lagos. She failure in both ministries with unsuccessfull results. Nevertheless their warm, simple and vain image get her the nomination to the presidencial election. She ran for President of Chile in the 2005 election, representing the governing Coalition of Parties for Democracy (CPD), but failed to obtain an absolute majority needed to win the election outright. In the runoff election scheduled for January 15 2006, she will face businessman Sebastián Piñera from the National Renewal party, who obtained 25% of the vote.
Bachelet is a separated mother of three (differents fathers). She speaks Spanish, English, German, Portuguese, French and some Russian.
Life and career
Bachelet was born in Santiago to anthropologist Ángela Jeria and Air Force General Alberto Bachelet. She graduated from high school in 1969 at Liceo Nº 1 Javiera Carrera, a girls-only school. In 1970 she entered medical school at the University of Chile.
Under the government of Salvador Allende, Bachelet's father was put in charge of the Food Distribution Office, and on the day of the September 11 1973 coup, he was detained at the Air War Academy, under charges of treason. Following daily torture at Santiago's Public Prison, in March 1974, as a product of continuous beating, he suffered a cardiac arrest that caused his death. Bachelet's then-boyfriend, Jaime López, was also detained and tortured before being disappeared. On 10 January 1975, Bachelet and her mother were also detained, and tortured at Villa Grimaldi, a notorious detention center in Santiago, for 21 days.[1] In 1975, due to family connections, both were —rather than disappeared— exiled to Australia, where Bachelet's older brother Alberto lived. Bachelet and her mother then settled in East Germany where Bachelet learned German at the Herder Institute in Leipzig and continued with her medical studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
In 1979 Bachelet returned to Chile, where she concluded her studies and graduated —in 1982— from medical school as a surgeon at the University of Chile. Between 1983 and 1986 she specialized in pediatrics and public health at Children's Hospital Roberto del Río. During this time, she returned to political activity, to fight for the re-establishment of democracy. Between 1985 and 1987 she had a two-year relationship with Alex Vojkovic [2], a spokesman for the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), an armed group which among other activities attempted to assassinate Pinochet in 1986. She aided non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as PIDEE (which she headed between 1986 and 1990), helping children of the tortured and disappeared.
Following the return of democracy in 1990, Bachelet worked for the Ministry of Health and was a consultant for the Pan-American Health Organization, the World Health Organization and the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ).
Between 1994 and July 1997, Bachelet worked as adviser for the Health Undersecretary. Driven by an interest in civil-military relations, she began to study military strategy at the National Academy of Political and Strategic Studies (Anepe) in Chile, obtaining first place of her promotion, which allowed her to continue her studies in the United States at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, DC, under a presidential scholarship. In 1998 she returned to Chile to work for the Defense Ministry as Minister adviser and graduated from a Masters program in military science at the Chilean Army's War Academy.
Political life
As a university student, Bachelet was a member of the Socialist Youth. She joined the Socialist Party of Chile in the 1970s. In 1995 she became a part of the party's Central Committee, and from 1998 until 2000 she was an active member of the Political Commission. In 1996, she ran for mayor of Las Condes —a Santiago suburb— for the Socialists, obtaining only 2.35%.
Bachelet was named Minister of Health by President Ricardo Lagos in March 11 2000, and on January 7 2002 she was appointed Defense Minister, becoming the first woman to hold this post in the history of Chile and of Latin America.
In late 2004, following a surge of her popularity in opinion polls, Bachelet was asked to become the Socialists' candidate for the presidency[3], resigning on October 1 of that year from her government post in order to begin her campaign. A primary was to be held to formally define the sole presidential candidate of the CPD, Chile's governing coalition since 1990. However, Bachelet's rival, Christian Democrat Soledad Alvear, a former cabinet member of the current and past two CPD administrations, pulled out of the race two months early due to a lack of support within her own party and in opinion polls.
At the 2005 election, Bachelet faced the center-right Sebastián Piñera (RN), the right-wing Joaquín Lavín (UDI) and the far-left Tomás Hirsch (JPM). She obtained 46% of the vote, to Piñera's 25%, Lavín's 23% and Hirsch's 5%. She now goes on to face Piñera in a runoff on January 15, 2006. If victorious, Bachelet would be the second elected woman leader in South America after Guyana's Janet Jagan and the third in Latin America after Nicaragua's Violeta Chamorro and Panama's Mireya Moscoso.
Bachelet has promised that if elected, half her cabinet would be women, adding "We are going to set a standard for Latin America."
External links
Official presidential campaign site- Bachelet's background and discussion (The Latin Americanist)
- The woman eyeing Chile's top job (BBC News)
- The unexpected travails of the woman who would be president (The Economist)
