Bachelet Wins Chilean Presidency

Socialist Doctor Becomes Chile's First Female President

(AP) 
Bachelet will be only the third woman directly elected president of a Latin American country, following Violeta Chamorro, who governed Nicaragua from 1990 to 1997, and Mireya Moscoso, president of Panama from 1999 to 2004.

However, Bachelet, unlike those two women, did not follow a politically prominent husband into power.

Bachelet's father was an air force general who was arrested and tortured for opposing the 1973 coup that brought Pinochet to power. Alberto Bachelet died in prison of a heart attack, probably caused by the torture, Bachelet says.

A 22-year-old medical student at the time, Bachelet was also arrested along with her mother and later forced into five years of exile, first in Australia, then in communist East Germany. She married a fellow Chilean exile while in East Germany. Back in Chile, they separated, and she had a third child from a new relationship.

Lagos, the mentor she is following into power, has deftly balanced his socialist ideology with market-oriented economics and enjoys an approval rate above 70 percent. Lagos is constitutionally prohibited from seeking immediate re-election, but as he voted, his backers chanted "2010," referring to the next election.

In a speech to the nation after congratulating Bachelet on the phone, Lagos said, "We now have a new Chile, we have for the first time in our history a woman president."

In spite of their different political backgrounds and ideologies, both Bachelet and Pinera outlined similar goals, promising to continue the two-decade-long free-market policies that have made Chile's economy one of the healthiest in the region.

Both said they would fight to lower the 8 percent unemployment rate, improve public health, housing and education services and curb rising urban crime. They also promised to reform Chile's 25-year-old private social security systems to ensure better pensions for retirees, though neither has given details of how.

"By the end of my government in 2010 we will have consolidated a system of social protection that will give Chileans and their families the tranquility that they will have a decent job," Bachelet said Sunday.

Lagos and Bachelet belong to the same Socialist Party as Salvador Allende, whose leftist policies prompted Pinochet's bloody coup. But the party allied with other major left-center parties in 1990 to oust the right wing, and their coalition has held while leading Chile into a free-trade pact with the United States, cutting inflation and fostering growth of about 6 percent a year.

Chile's next president will be inaugurated on March 11, joining the ranks of Latin American leaders including leftists such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and newly elected Evo Morales of Bolivia.

Bachelet indicated she would work with all the region's leaders. "We shouldn't take Latin America back to the Cold War. Chavez, Morales, they are presidents elected by their peoples. Chile must have relationships with all of them."

Pinochet was not a factor in the campaign, and his spokesman, retired Gen. Guillermo Garin, said he paid little attention to it. At 90, Pinochet is ailing and was only recently freed from house arrest. He faces charges of human rights abuses and corruption stemming from his 17-year rule.