Via the BBC: Chile gets first woman president
Partial results in Chile’s presidential election give a clear victory to the centre-left candidate Michelle Bachelet, with 53% of the vote.With two-thirds of the run-off vote counted, she is set to become the country’s first woman president.
[...]
A doctor and a single mother, Ms Bachelet is seen as an unusual choice for the presidency in a country considered one of the most socially conservative in South America.
Her rival, conservative businessman Sebastian Pinera, has so far polled 46.8%, the interior ministry said.
Of course, the outgoing president is also a socialist, so it isn’t odd. However, the issue with Bachelet (at least vis-a-vis social conservatism) is that she is divorced and an agnostic, in addition to being a socialist, I suppose. She is also the daughter of an anti-Pinochet general, who was killed during the ’73 coup.
From a WaPo profile:
“I’m agnostic. . . . I believe in the state,” Bachelet told several groups of evangelical ministers last week. “I believe the state has an important role in guaranteeing the diversity of men and women in Chile — their different spiritualities, philosophies and ways of life.”
In regards to her father, and her personal experience with the coup of 1973:
Her father, Alberto, was an air force general who served under President Salvador Allende, a socialist. He was thrown into prison after the 1973 military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, along with thousands of other Allende supporters, and died in military custody.
Bachelet, a medical student at the time of the coup, was kidnapped by government security agents two years later, along with her mother. While detained, both women were blindfolded, beaten and tortured. They later fled into exile in Australia and East Germany. In 1979, Bachelet returned to Chile and worked as a pediatrician.
In regards to the historic significance of her win:
If elected, Bachelet would be the first female president in most of Latin America to be elected strictly on her own merits. Isabel Peron took over as Argentina’s president in 1974 when her husband Juan died. Violeta Chamorro was elected president of Nicaragua in 1990, but she was largely known as the widow of Pedro Chamorro, an assassinated newspaper publisher. In Panama, the widow of President Arnulfo Arias became president in 1999. In Guyana, voters in 1997 elected the widow of longtime President Cheddi Jagan. Bolivia, Haiti and Ecuador have all appointed women briefly as caretaker presidents.
Matthew Shugart has some additional commentary here.
