Socialist Bachelet Wins Chilean Presidency

[which doctor]

SANTIAGO: A torture victim in the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, a former defence minister and a medical doctor, socialist Michelle Bachelet parlayed her ability to connect with voters into becoming Chile's first woman president.

Her challenger, rightist billionaire Sebastian Pinera, conceded shortly after first returns in Sunday's election showed Bachelet winning more than 53 per cent of the votes.

Bachelet, also a former health minister, is a socialist from the centre-left coalition that has governed Chile since the end of the 1973-1990 Pinochet regime.

"Together we recovered democracy for Chile," Bachelet, the front-runner during the campaign, said in a presidential debate. "Now I invite you to be a part of another historic moment by electing Chile's first ever woman president. Let's make history." A poll this month showed Bachelet, known for her charisma when she meets one-on-one with voters, winning high marks for honesty and trustworthiness, and with a huge lead over Pinera among lower-class women.

She had failed to win more than 50 per cent of the vote needed for an outright victory in a four-way first round presidential race in December.

Bachelet is a separated mother of three and her liberal social ideas at times clash with Chile's conservative elite, but business leaders trust her to carry on the prudent economic policies of her mentor, outgoing President Ricardo Lagos.

Chile's economy, heavily supported by soaring prices for the nation's chief export, copper, has surged in the last two years. Under three consecutive centre-left governments Chile has become the region's star economy.

Bachelet, 54, is also drawing the support of young Chileans, particularly women who are making up a rapidly increasing percentage of the work force and who support one in three Chilean households.

"I think her brand of leadership will be tremendously close, tremendously friendly and tremendously unhierarchical," said Marta Lagos, head of the MORI polling firm.

"I believe she will make a real attempt to transform (Chile's) rigid social structure in terms of dismantling inequalities." She said that otherwise Bachelet would continue policies of the Lagos government.

Bachelet's brief imprisonment and torture at the beginning of the military dictatorship and her unlikely later role as defence minister presented a compelling life story to Chileans.

She went into exile with her mother to Australia and Germany after they were both released from prison.

Her father, an air force general, died of a heart attack in a prison camp where he had been tortured. He was one of about 3000 people who died or disappeared in political violence during the military regime.

Critics have said Bachelet relies too much on her personal image and family history to fuel her popularity, and that she has failed to outline clear policies regarding how she will combat the wide gap between rich and poor in Chile.

Source (http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3542003a12,00.html)

I guess this is good news.

[Sentinel]

It is good news, and shows that the leftist trend continues in Latin America.
I doubt she'll be of Chavez's caliber, but that is yet to see.
A female president being elected is also a great thing.

I don't believe in bourgeis elections by default, but since Chavez and Morales came to power I've come to the conclusion that in present day Latin America they reflect the will of the people.

The massive leftwing wave going through the continent is taking over nations with elections now. But should these elected leaders not live up to what they promise, the
people will take to more radical methods. Revolutions.

Viva america latina!

[Janus]

Yes, I suppose so but keep in mind that she's more of a center-socialist. However, this shows positive change because Chile has always been portrayed as a conservative male-dominated nation.

[drain.you]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4613864.stm

Yay, I've been hoping for ages that she would get elected!

[Fidelbrand]

The whole of Latin America is boiling some good soup these years.
Hope their socialist influence rocks on.

[ColinH]

While all the media outlets are claiming she is a socialist, I am skeptical. What makes her so?

[which doctor]

She is also agnostic, yay! I'm pretty sure she claims to be a socialist, at least she is a socialist by today's standards which are pretty low.

[LA GUERRA OLVIDADA]

I'd call her a Social Democrat. She will change little.

Let us know when she's allying herself with Castro and we'll talk about her Socialist-ness.

[matiasm]

socialist? yeah right!! shes keeping the International Monetary Fund austerity program!!! she herself stated that she will not change the economics structure of chile but just improve it. Sounds like a Neoliberalist too me!!!

I see a few changes with sum benefits to the poorer people but mostly to the already developed people!!

Let me know when she blocks US dependency from Chile!!!

[redstar2000]

In my opinion what we are really seeing is that Latin American capitalism has "matured" to the point where it is entering an "age of reform"...like western Europe and North America did during (roughly) 1930-50.

Don't pay any attention to the "socialist" rhetoric; what's really happening there is the modernization of capitalism. Portions of the old elites are very upset about that...just as they were here.

A little known event, for example, was the effort by one of the big northeastern banks to promote a military coup against Franklin D. Roosevelt in the early 1930s.

I think that what's happening in Latin America is a striking empirical confirmation of historical materialism...watching whole countries go through the same stages that we did.

And you know what happens next...the countries that reform themselves most successfully will become imperialist powers in their own right.

Some of the smaller and weaker countries in Latin America are going to get "carved up" in a few decades...watch and see.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[which doctor]

In my opinion what we are really seeing is that Latin American capitalism has "matured" to the point where it is entering an "age of reform"...like western Europe and North America did during (roughly) 1930-50.

Don't pay any attention to the "socialist" rhetoric; what's really happening there is the modernization of capitalism. Portions of the old elites are very upset about that...just as they were here.
I wasn't really paying attention to the socialist part, I even heard she was a strong supporter of the free market. However I suppose we must support them for progressing and evolving into the next "stage".



I think that what's happening in Latin America is a striking empirical confirmation of historical materialism...watching whole countries go through the same stages that we did.
I was wondering where this would fit into Historical Materialism and you really helped me out. I didn't think there was really a place for them, but your thoughts have changed now. I now see that they are about 70 years behind us in the entire scheme of things.
Does this mean that America will experience the revolution before Latin America will? I must say that it probaly will. Some call this the "Chavez Effect", but now I call it historical materialism.



And you know what happens next...the countries that reform themselves most successfully will become imperialist powers in their own right.

Some of the smaller and weaker countries in Latin America are going to get "carved up" in a few decades...watch and see.
The next America will be in Latin America? That's an interesting thought, but I'm afraid it's true. I could imagine Latin America turning into a network of larger, unified, countries.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Socialist-Christian Democratic coalition retains power in Chile
By Bill Van Auken

Sunday’s election victory of Michelle Bachelet, a leader of Chile’s Socialist Party, has been widely reported as another indication of a “turn to the left” in Latin America. Much of the media attention focused on the 54-year-old pediatrician becoming the country’s first woman president.

The essential political content of the election results, however, is that the Socialist Party-Christian Democratic coalition—known in Chile as the Concertación—which has exercised power in the interests of big business since 1990, will continue to hold the reins of state power.

There is no doubt that the so-called “social” issues featured prominently in the campaign, which saw the Chilean right’s candidate, billionaire businessman Sebastian Piñera, run on a “family values” platform, attempting to contrast his traditional marriage and supposed religious piety with Bachelet’s status as a single mother and her self-acknowledged agnosticism.

For its part, the Socialist Party modeled Bachelet’s campaign on those of British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, emphasizing her personal qualities, while saying little about political program.

In this, the second round of the election, Bachelet defeated Piñera with 53.5 percent of the vote to his 46.5 percent. The billionaire attempted to appeal both to the extreme right—vowing to put an end to prosecutions of military personnel accused of mass killings, assassinations and torture under the dictatorship—and to the Christian Democrats, describing himself as a “Christian humanist” and distancing himself from former dictator Augusto Pinochet. In the end, he proved unsuccessful in straddling these contradictory appeals.

For masses of working people in Chile, the right remains unalterably associated with the horrors inflicted upon the population during the 17 years of military dictatorship. In the more impoverished and working class areas, including the mining districts, Bachelet led by a significantly wider margin, while Piñera polled better in the wealthier districts of Santiago.

Bachelet’s political evolution is emblematic of the steady shift to the right by the Chilean Socialist Party in the three decades since the overthrow of Socialist Party President Salvador Allende and the taking of power by General Pinochet in a 1973 CIA-backed military coup.

The daughter of an air force general who was tortured to death by the dictatorship for his close ties with the Allende government, Bachelet was herself arrested, together with her mother, and imprisoned in the infamous Villa Grimaldi detention center, where she too was tortured. After her release, she lived for more than five years in exile, first in Australia and then in East Germany.

After returning to Chile in 1979, she worked in a Swedish-financed clinic that treated the children of families that faced political repression and torture. In 1994, four years after the Socialist-Christian Democratic coalition first came to power, she was appointed as an adviser to the Minister of Health.

In 1996, however, her political career took a sharp turn. She began studies at the Chilean national war college and, a year later, was sent to Washington to attend the Inter-American Defense College. Upon her return, she worked in the Chilean Defense Ministry, while serving on the Socialist Party’s commission on military affairs.

In 2000, with the election of President Carlos Lagos—the first Socialist to head the Chilean government since Allende—she was first appointed health minister and then defense minister. As the first woman to hold the latter post, she supervised one of the biggest buildups of the Chilean military in history and oversaw the deployment of Chilean troops to Haiti, where they are still participating in the “peacekeeping” force that relieved the US Marines who had invaded following Washington’s ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The military high command, with which Bachelet worked as minister, remains largely dominated by Pinochet’s allies. Out of 36 generals in the Chilean army, at least 13 were officers in the units that carried out the repression under the dictatorship, responsible for the “disappearances,” imprisonment and torture of tens of thousands of Chileans.

“I want my government to be remembered as a government for all,” Bachelet said after her victory was announced. The seemingly innocuous statement had more than one meaning. On the one hand, it echoed her election campaign rhetoric about seeking to better the conditions of the large section of the Chilean population, while, on the other, it was directed to the right and the sections of the ruling establishment that it represents, assuring them that she will protect their interests.

The president-elect vowed not to make any radical change from the free-market policies that were imposed upon the country through the crushing of the working class under the dictatorship and which have been continued ever since. She pledged to “walk the same road” as her predecessors and rebuffed suggestions that she might retreat from the sweeping privatizations that have been carried out over the past decades.

The so-called “Chilean economic miracle” has made Chile one of the most attractive “emerging markets,” generating huge profits for the multinationals and the country’s financial elite, but leaving huge sections of Chilean working people poor and unemployed. Alongside Brazil, Chile is one of the most socially unequal countries in the hemisphere.

The Wall Street markets reacted calmly to the Chilean election results. There is full confidence that the new administration will make no changes in the economic policies that have given foreign and domestic capital free rein. Moreover, for the more politically conscious sections of the ruling elite the victory of the Concertación is undoubtedly the best outcome.

The inclusion of the Socialist Party in the government is seen as creating more favorable conditions of “governability”—a phrase that is more and more frequently invoked in favor of the so-called left governments that have come to power elsewhere in Latin America. The perception is that for the right—in Chile the political heirs of Pinochet—to carry out the same policies would create greater conditions of political instability.

Bachelet fell 4 percentage points short of winning an absolute majority of the vote during the first round of the elections December 11, while Piñera, candidate of the National Renovation (RN) party, received 25 percent of the ballots cast. In the second round, the right-wing Independent Democratic Union (UDI) and its candidate Joaquin Lavin backed Piñera, while the Communist Party called for a vote for Bachelet.

The Chilean CP did so on the grounds that Bachelet had responded favorably to a series of questions that the Stalinist party had put to the candidate covering issues related to electoral reform, labor laws, human rights and other issues.

However, El Siglo, the CP’s weekly magazine, published a statement that amounted to a shamefaced disclaimer, stressing: “no one imagines that M. Bachelet is going to change the neo-liberal stamp of the Concertación. We only hope that she has some gestures of dignity.” The publication added, “We are and will be a force of opposition, whoever heads the government.” In fact—as its endorsement demonstrated—the CP was and remains a necessary political prop for the capitalist state in Chile, even though its base of support has dwindled dramatically.

[Sentinel]

W T F :


Socialist Party-Christian Democratic coalition—known in Chile as the Concertación—which has exercised power in the interests of big business since 1990, will continue to hold the reins of state power.

Shit. Guess I was a bit overenthusiastic over her victory, after all. No good.
Maybe one should learn more about politics in Latin America. :(

[bolshevik butcher]

I think to dismiss this woudl be foolish. While she is a bit 'wishy washy' this is still progression to the left in Latin America, and it still signifies the beggining of teh awakeneing of the chilean masses.

I think to dismiss all the leftward trends in Latin America is crazy and ultraleftist in the extreme.

While most leaders might not be revolutionary marxists, they are certainly much more progressive than those in other countries and the working class is becoming more and more demanding and radical.

[The Grey Blur]

Seconded, let us not attack Socialist progress (no matter how moderate) un-critically.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

So she's socialist because she says she is?

This is the same alliance that's been in power since Pinochet left, and they've done the same thing every other bourgeois government in Latin America has done, they just call themselves socialist.

There's a huge trend of political immaturity on this board. People need to understand how to look at things from a materialist point of view, finding out what's really going on, and not judging people by their self-affixed labels.

[WUOrevolt]

First woman president, sweet.

[bolshevik butcher]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2006, 11:30 PM
So she's socialist because she says she is?

This is the same alliance that's been in power since Pinochet left, and they've done the same thing every other bourgeois government in Latin America has done, they just call themselves socialist.

There's a huge trend of political immaturity on this board. People need to understand how to look at things from a materialist point of view, finding out what's really going on, and not judging people by their self-affixed labels.
I think that thats a bit far fethced. I think taht she is a moderate social democrat. While she isnt 'a lenin', she is worth critically supproting and is certainly better than the oppisition. And you're on about immatutiy?

[which doctor]

She will modernize and improve the living standards of Chile. We can support her for that.

[bolshevik butcher]

Exactly. More importantly she is giving the working class a say in politics to an extent, and class consciousness will increase. Of couse this is jsut ignored by ultra leftists.