Opinion - News Analysis   

Poised to create history

Jonathan Franklin

MICHELLE BACHELET was a 23-year-old medical student in Chile when a gang of military men broke into her house and kidnapped both her and her mother, Angela Jeria. It was January 1975, and the Chilean secret police officers were crushing protests and eliminating civilians on the orders of military dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Ms. Bachelet, a popular and politically active student, was one of thousands accused of being an "enemy" of the new regime. "They put tape and dark glasses over our eyes. We couldn't see," Ms. Bachelet recounts in her office in central Santiago. "They tortured me. They hit me. But they did not put me on the parillada [metal table used to torture prisoners with electricity]." In a nearby room, her mother was similarly tortured and kept for nearly a week without food or water.

Thanks to family connections with top military officials, both women were spared death and instead exiled to Australia. Within five years, Ms. Bachelet returned to Chile and started working as a clandestine human rights activist.

Today she is the most admired politician in Chile. She is on the brink of being elected President. While the meteoric rise ofthe 54-year-old former paediatricianwas initially dismissed as a passing trend, today she is the clear favourite to win on December 11. Current polls show her with a comfortable 25-point lead over her nearest rival. Ms. Bachelet, a lifelong member of the Chilean Socialist party, is closely allied to the hugely popular President Ricardo Lagos and with a calm social scene and booming economy is expected to win the election easily, either in the next month's first round or a run-off in January.

If elected, this single mother of three will shatter centuries of political traditions in both Chile and South America. Ms. Bachelet would be the first woman elected President of a major South American nation. "People see I am a mother and head of a household. Today in Chile, one-third of households are run by women. They wake up, take the children to school, go to work," says Ms. Bachelet. "To them I am hope."

Ms. Bachelet's candidacy has already catapulted women's health and job issues to the forefront of the political stage. Her rightwing opponent, Joaquin Lavin, has proposed that housewives be given pensions when they retire at 65, and the entire capital city of Santiago is now awash with photos of female candidates hopping on to the bandwagon.

"Michelle makes you feel like we did it together. She is just one more [part of the team]," says Teresa Boj Jonas, a nutritionist who worked under Ms. Bachelet in the Health Ministry. "The other day I went to a party with 15 women and 10 men. They were all talking about Michelle and her magic. She is awakening the idea that we need new style of politics, not confrontational. She generates confidence."

But the steely confidence shown by Ms. Bachelet was honed in one of the continent's most brutal governments, the 1973-1990 military regime led by Pinochet, which killed approximately 3,000 Chilean civilians. In many cases their bodies were dropped from helicopters into the Pacific Ocean. One of the "disappeared" was Ms. Bachelet's then boyfriend, Jamie Lopez, who was tortured for weeks until he revealed all the names of guerrillas fighting in the resistance against the dictatorship.

Ms. Bachelet, however, did not crack under torture. She kept her secrets and emerged fortified from the experience. From the moment she was exiled to Australia in 1975, Michelle Bachelet fought for democracy. "I noticed that one of the barriers to full democracy was the fault of understanding between the military world and the civilian world," she says. "They spoke different languages. I wanted to help with that. I could be a bridge between those two worlds."

Her hard work led to a surprise government job. In 2002, she was named Minister of Defence. To the arch-conservative and Catholic military, the appointment was a stark reminder that the authoritarian ways of Pinochet had ended. Never had a woman held that post in South America. Now she was commanding the same military that had ordered the deaths of her father, boyfriend, and friends.

As her popularity soared, a group of Senators invited her to a secret meeting. Was she interested in the party's nomination? Did she realise that thousands of citizens were asking them to give her the candidacy? Then one Senator asked: "What do you want in life?" "You all want to know what is my dream?" said Ms. Bachelet. "Very simple. To walk along the beach, holding the hand of my lover." The men looked at each other, stunned. The most highly valued politician in Chile was putting politics below her personal goals of happiness. From that moment, the traditional rules of politics in Chile were shattered. Not only was a single mother on the path to take power in one of South America's most macho societies, but she was doing it without the usual negative attacks that politicians use.

In preparation, Ms. Bachelet has been travelling the world meeting the likes of Hillary Clinton. "As women politicians, we talk about the most difficult themes of state security, foreign relations and development models, then ask, `How do you make it work with your husband?' The interesting thing is that these women — most of them — don't lose the perspective that the focus is not the position but the job at hand."

How does she balance being a single mother with a very demanding career? "You are in a meeting and afterwards they tell you your son called and needs wax paper for his homework. It is not that you cancel your meeting, but after your day, you go to the supermarket to buy the supplies." —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Decline and fall of the RJD
An end to `Greater Israel'?
Bihar joins the national mainstream
Unease over environment clearances
Can the South Asian region do it too?
Poised to create history
Internet scams: lessons about buyers
War crimes and phosphorus clouds
A vote for change
Gimmickry exposed
Big challenge
Good show
Suspect motives

Copyright © 2005, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu