A Socialist Single Mother Will Become Chile's First Female President

Chilean Socialist poll leader faces runoff

Staff and agencies
Monday December 12, 2005


A Socialist single mother will become Chile's first female president, it emerged today - as long as she can defeat a conservative multimillionaire businessman in a runoff election in January.

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If elected president, she says, she would extend the government's policies that have halved poverty in Chile and transformed its economy into the most stable in South America. She has also pledged to overhaul the country's private pension system.

Ms Bachelet is the daughter of an air force general who opposed the Pinochet coup and was jailed and tortured by his peers, dying in prison. Along with her mother, she herself was imprisoned and tortured before being allowed to go into exile first in Australia and then in East Germany.

Mr Piñera is reported to be the richest man in Chile, with $1bn (£567m) in assets. His companies include finance and banking firms, Chile's largest airline and a television channel. He has promised to put all his interests in a blind trust if he is elected president.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/chile/story/0,13755,1665594,00.html

And that is a good thing.

Remember, there will be a runoff, and that runoff will likely consolitate the right wing and the moderates against her.

This is the problem with runoff elections.

Wouldn't it be cool to have a trifecta of socialist countries in SA?

Venezuela, Argentina, and Chile

But the results worry me a little. In the run-off, can't all her various conservative opponents align against her? She got less than 50% of the vote, so if all the conservatives vote against her in the run-off, it seems like it'd be tough to beat them. I'm crossing my fingers, though. She'd be such a great example for South America, and for women in general.

So there's your trifecta already

Is the very model of what Bush had planned for us. I read he got the idea from the Pinochet minister of finance.

As long as stocks were going up significantly, when the economy went from the under-capitalized doldrums to significant capitalized improvement, the fees weren't so noticeable. But when returns slowed to more normal levels, the administrative fees quickly cost the enrollees a LOT of their investment.

As is typical of Republican type administrations, their friends in the banking, finance, and crony capitalism arenas made out like bandits. Just like bandits. The regular people got screwed. The wealthy get wealthier and extremely wealthy people get even wealthier. The middle class loses ground and the poor get bupkus.

This was taken in Chile Wednesday afternoon, just before she learned of death and injuries of her campaign supporters in the tragic bus accident.

Single Mother Poised to Be Chilean President
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/121205WB.shtml
Michelle Bachelet, a single mother with three children who was once tortured by the secret police of General Augusto Pinochet, is poised to become president of Chile. Ms. Bachelet has pledged to split her cabinet evenly between men and women, a breakthrough in a country where sexual harassment at work was made illegal only this year.

You guys are seriously lucky!

Good luck to Michelle Bachelet!!!!!