Michelle Bachelet
Michelle Bachelet | |
|---|---|
 | |
| President of Chile | |
| In office March 11, 2006 – present | |
| Preceded by | Ricardo Lagos |
| Personal details | |
| Born | September 29, 1951 Santiago, Chile |
| Political party | Socialist |
Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria (born September 29 1951) is the current President of Chile, the first woman to hold this position in the country's history. She won the 2006 election in a runoff, beating center-right billionaire businessman and former senator Sebastián Piñera, with 53.5% of the vote. A moderate Socialist, she campaigned on a platform of continuing Chile's free market policies, while increasing social benefits to help reduce the country's gap between rich and poor, one of the largest in the world. Her term was inaugurated on March 11 2006.
Bachelet —surgeon, pediatrician and epidemiologist with studies in military strategy— served as Health Minister and Defense Minister under President Ricardo Lagos. She is a separated mother of three and a self-described agnostic, which sets her apart in a predominantly conservative and Catholic country. A polyglot, she speaks Spanish, English, German, Portuguese and French.
Life and career
Early life
Bachelet was born in Santiago, the second child of anthropologist Ángela Jeria Gómez and Air Force Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet Martínez. Her paternal great-great-grandfather, Joseph Bachelet Lapierre, was a French wine merchant from Chassagne-Montrachet who emigrated to Chile with his Parisian wife in 1860 hired as a wine-making expert by the Subercaseaux vineyards. Her paternal great-grandfather, Germán Bachelet, was born in Chile and married to a French-Swiss woman. Of Greek ancestors, her maternal grandfather, Máximo Jeria Chacón, was the first person to receive a degree in agronomic engineering in Chile and funded several agronomy schools in the country.
Much of Bachelet's childhood years were spent traveling around Chile, moving with her family from one military base to another. She attended primary school in Quintero, Cerro Moreno, Antofagasta and San Bernardo. In 1962 she moved with her family to the United States, where her father was assigned to the military mission at the Chilean Embassy in Washington. Her family spent almost two years living in Bethesda, Maryland, where she attended Western Junior High School (now known as Westland Middle School) and learned to speak English fluently. Back in Chile, she graduated from high school in 1969 at Liceo Nº 1 Javiera Carrera, a prestigious girls-only public school, finishing near the top of her class. There, she was president of her class, a member of the school's choir and volleyball teams, and part of a theater group and a music band called Las Clap Clap (which she helped found) that toured through many school festivals. She entered medical school at the University of Chile in 1970, obtaining one of the highest national scores in the university admission test. She originally wanted to study sociology but was prevailed upon by her father to study medicine instead.
Torture and exile
Facing growing food shortages, the government of Salvador Allende placed Bachelet's father in charge of the Food Distribution Office. When Augusto Pinochet came to power in the September 11 1973 coup, General Bachelet, refusing exile, was detained at the Air War Academy, under charges of treason. Following months of daily torture at Santiago's Public Prison, on March 12 1974, he suffered a cardiac arrest that resulted in his death. On January 10 1975, Bachelet and her mother were detained, and tortured, at Villa Grimaldi, a notorious secret detention center in Santiago.[1] Some days later they were transferred to Cuatro Álamos ("Four Poplars") detention center, where they were held until the end of January. Later in 1975, due to sympathetic connections in the military, both were exiled to Australia, where Bachelet's older brother Alberto had moved in 1969.
In May 1975, Bachelet left Australia and moved to East Germany, to an apartment assigned by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) government in Am Stern, Potsdam; her mother joined her a month later. In October 1976 she began working at a communal clinic in the Babelsberg neighborhood, as a preparation step to continue her medical studies at an East German university. During this period she met architect Jorge Dávalos, another Chilean exile, whom she married in 1977. In January 1978 she went to Leipzig to learn German at the Karl Marx University's Herder Institute (now the University of Leipzig). Her first child with Dávalos, Sebastián, was born there that same year. She returned to Potsdam in September 1978, to continue her medical studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin for two years. However, only five months after enrolling as a student, she obtained authorization to return to her country.
Return to Chile
In February 1979 Bachelet returned to Santiago, Chile from East Germany. Her medical school coursework from the GDR was not recognized at the University of Chile (under the control of the military at the time of her return), forcing her to resume her studies from where she had left off before fleeing the country. She graduated as an M.D. in 1982 as one of the best students in her class. Her academic performance and published papers earned her a scholarship to specialize in pediatrics and public health at Children's Hospital Roberto del Río (1983–1986). During this time she also worked at PIDEE (Protection of Children Injured by States of Emergency Foundation), a non-governmental organization helping children of the tortured and missing in Santiago and Chillán. She was head of the foundation's Medical Department between 1986 and 1990. Some time after her second child with Dávalos, Francisca, was born in 1984, she and her husband legally separated.
Between 1985 and 1987 Bachelet had a romantic relationship with Alex Vojkovic Trier[2], a Communist engineer and spokesman for the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, an armed group which among other activities attempted to assassinate Augusto Pinochet in 1986. This affair turned into a minor issue during her presidential campaign, during which she argued that she never supported any of Vojkovic's activities.
In 1990, after democracy was restored in Chile, Bachelet worked for the Ministry of Health's West Santiago Health Service and was a consultant for the Pan-American Health Organization, the World Health Organization and the German Corporation for Technical Cooperation. While working for the National AIDS Commission (Conasida), she met Aníbal Henríquez, a physician, with whom she had her third child, Sofia, born in 1992. Between March 1994 and July 1997, Bachelet worked as Senior Assistant to the Deputy Health Minister.
Driven by an interest in civil-military relations, in 1996 she began studies in military strategy at the National Academy for Strategic and Policy Studies (Anepe) in Chile, obtaining first place in her class. Her student achievement earned her a presidential scholarship, permitting her to continue her studies in the United States at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, DC, completing a Continental Defense Course in 1997. In 1998 she returned to Chile to work for the Defense Ministry as Senior Assistant to the Defense Minister. She subsequently graduated from a Master's program in military science at the Chilean Army's War Academy.
Political life
A Socialist Party member
On her first year as university student, in 1970, Bachelet became a member of the Socialist Youth, then presided by future deputy and now disappeared physician Carlos Lorca. She then joined the Socialist Party of Chile and was politically active during the second half of the 1980s, fighting —though not in the front line— for the re-establishment of democracy in Chile. In 1995 she became part of the party's Central Committee, and from 1998 until 2000 she was an active member of the Political Commission.
In 1996, Bachelet ran against future presidential adversary Joaquín Lavín for the mayorship of Las Condes, a wealthy Santiago suburb. Lavín was elected mayor with nearly 78% of the vote, while she only finished fourth at 2.35%. In the 1999 CPD —Coalition of Parties for Democracy, Chile's governing coalition since 1990— presidential primary, she worked for Ricardo Lagos's nomination, heading the Santiago electoral zone.
Ministership
On March 11 2000 Bachelet, a virtually unknown at the time, was appointed Minister of Health by President Ricardo Lagos. She began with an in-depth reform of the public healthcare system that led to the AUGE plan a few years later. She was also given the task of eliminating waiting lists in the public hospital system within the first 100 days of Lagos's government. Unable to meet this goal, she offered her resignation, which was promptly rejected by the President.
On January 7 2002 Bachelet was appointed Defense Minister, becoming the first woman to hold this post in a Latin American country and one of the few in the world. While Minister of Defense, she played a key role in the historic 2003 declaration by General Juan Emilio Cheyre, head of the army, that "never again" would the military subvert democracy in Chile. She also oversaw a reform of the military pension system which is commonly viewed as a successful effort and continued with the process of modernization of the Chilean armed forces with the purchasing of new military equipment.
Presidential candidacy
In late 2004, following a surge of her popularity in opinion polls, Bachelet was asked to become the Socialists' candidate for the presidency[3]. Ángela Jeria, her mother, revealed in an interview that her daughter was hesitant to accept the nomination, but finally agreed because she "couldn't let [her] people down."[4] On October 1 of that year she resigned from her government post in order to begin her campaign.
An open primary scheduled for July 2005 to define the sole presidential candidate of the CPD was canceled after Bachelet's only rival, Christian Democrat Soledad Alvear, a cabinet member in the three CPD administrations, pulled out early due to a lack of support within her own party and in opinion polls.
At the December 2005 election, Bachelet faced the center-right candidate Sebastián Piñera (RN), the right-wing candidate Joaquín Lavín (UDI) and the far-left candidate Tomás Hirsch (JPM). As predicted by opinion polls, she failed to obtain the absolute majority needed to win the election outright, winning 46% of the vote. In the runoff election on January 15, 2006, Bachelet faced Piñera, and won the presidency with 53.5% of the vote, thus becoming her country's first female elected president and the first woman who was not the wife of a previous head of state or political leader to reach the presidency of a Latin American nation in a direct election.
Following official confirmation on January 30 2006 from the Electoral Qualifier Tribunal (Tricel) declaring her the winner of the election, Bachelet announced her cabinet of ministers. It was composed of ten men and ten women, which fulfilled her campaign promise to make half her cabinet women. In keeping with the coalition's internal balance of power, she named seven ministers from the Christian Democrat Party (PDC), five from the Party for Democracy (PPD), four from the Socialist Party (PS), one from the Social Democrat Radical Party (PRSD) and three with no party affiliation. In the days that followed, she named the group of ministerial undersecretaries and regional intendants, following the same rule of "gender parity".
Presidency
Bachelet was sworn in as President of the Republic of Chile on March 11 2006, in a ceremony held in a plenary session of the National Congress in Valparaíso, which was attended by a record number of foreign heads of states and delegates.
Internal issues
Most of Bachelet's first three months in office were spent working on 36 measures she had promised during her campaign to implement during her first 100 days as president. They ranged from simple presidential decrees, such as providing free health care for older patients, to complex bills to reform the social security system and the electoral system.
Bachelet's first political crisis came in late April 2006, when massive high school student demonstrations, unseen in three decades, broke out throughout the country demanding a better education for the poor. (See 2006 student protests in Chile.)
Foreign relations
Bachelet chose neighboring Argentina as her first official visit to a foreign country. On March 21 2006 she met with president Néstor Kirchner, with whom she signed a strategic agreement of mutual cooperation in energy and infrastructure. The next day she travelled to Uruguay and met with president Tabaré Vázquez.
On April 10 2006 Bachelet made a brief visit to Paraguay. The next day she traveled to Brazil and met with President Lula da Silva, with whom she signed agreements on environmental protection, mining and energy and the concession of temporary residency papers. During her official state visit to Brazil, she received a Doctor Honoris Causa diploma on human rights from the University of Brasília (UnB).
Bachelet's first meeting with European leaders came at the Vienna Summit in mid-May, a gathering of Latin American and European heads of government.
Cabinet
| Office | Name | Party | Term |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minister of Interior | Andrés Zaldívar Larraín Belisario Velasco Baraona |
PDC PDC |
March 11-July 14 2006 July 14 2006- |
| Minister of Foreign Relations | Alejandro Foxley Rioseco | PDC | March 11 2006- |
| Minister of National Defense | Vivianne Blanlot Soza | PPD | March 11 2006- |
| Minister of Finance | Andrés Velasco Brañes | Ind. | March 11 2006- |
| Minister Secretary General of the Presidency | Paulina Veloso Valenzuela | PS | March 11 2006- |
| Minister Secretary General of Government | Ricardo Lagos Weber | PPD | March 11 2006- |
| Minister of Economy, Promotion, & Reconstruction | Ingrid Antonijevic Hahn Alejandro Ferreiro Yazigi |
PPD PDC |
March 11-July 14 2006 July 14 2006- |
| Minister of Planning & Cooperation | Clarisa Hardy Raskovan | PS | March 11 2006- |
| Minister of Education | Martín Zilic Hrepic Yasna Provoste Campillay |
PDC PDC |
March 11-July 14 2006 July 14 2006- |
| Minister of Justice | Isidro Solís Palma | PRSD | March 11 2006- |
| Minister of Labor & Social Security | Osvaldo Andrade Lara | PS | March 11 2006- |
| Minister of Public Works | Eduardo Bitrán Colodro | PPD | March 11 2006- |
| Minister of Transportation & Telecommunications | Sergio Espejo Yaksic | PDC | March 11 2006- |
| Minister of Health | María Soledad Barría Iroume | PS | March 11 2006- |
| Minister of Housing & Urbanism | Patricia Poblete Bennett | PDC | March 11 2006- |
| Minister of Public Lands | Romy Schmidt Crnosija | PPD | March 11 2006- |
| Minister of Agriculture | Álvaro Rojas Marín | PDC | March 11 2006- |
| Minister of Mining & Energy | Karen Poniachik Pollak | Ind. | March 11 2006- |
| Minister Director of National Women's Service | Laura Albornoz Pollman | PDC | March 11 2006- |
| National Council of Culture & the Arts | Paulina Urrutia Fernández | Ind. | March 11 2006- |
References
- ^ Davison, Phil. "Single mother poised to be Chilean President." The Independent. December 12 2005
- ^ "La historia del ex frentista que fue pareja de Bachelet." La Tercera. July 10 2005
- ^ "'All I want in life is to walk along the beach, holding my lover's hand'." The Guardian. November 22 2005
- ^ Santa María, Orietta. ""Estuve una semana encerrada en un cajón, vendada, atada"." Las Últimas Noticias. January 19 2006
- Rohter, Larry. "Woman in the News; A Leader Making Peace With Chile's Past." The New York Times. January 16 2006
"Biografía de Michelle Bachelet" (La Nación - January 15, 2006)- "La vida de la primera Presidenta de Chile" (La Nación - January 16, 2006)
- "Las huellas de Bachelet en Alemania Oriental" (Reportajes de La Tercera - April 9, 2006)
- "Biografías de Líderes Políticos CIDOB: Michelle Bachelet Jeria" (Fundació CIDOB, February 20, 2006)
External links
- Presidency of Chile
- Template:Es icon Presidencia de la República official site
- Template:Es icon Official presidential campaign site
- PBS Newshour - Interview transcript with video
- "The woman taking Chile's top job" (BBC News)
- "The unexpected travails of the woman who would be president" (The Economist - December 8, 2005)
- "Bachelet's citizens' democracy" (The Economist - March 10, 2006)
- "With a New Leader, Chile Seems to Shuck Its Strait Laces" (The New York Times - March 8, 2006)
- "Welcome Madam Chilean President to Washington" —Council on Hemispheric Affairs