Lagos Takes The Helm In Chile
Ricardo Lagos was sworn in Saturday as Chile's first socialist president in nearly three decades, promising to fortify a young democracy and help those left out of its legendary free-market expansion.
Lagos, a 62-year-old lawyer who won national fame a decade ago while fighting Gen. Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, also has pledged to curb a powerful military still staunchly loyal to the former military ruler.
"This is a fiesta for democracy," a smiling Lagos, wearing a dark suit and red tie, said Saturday. He took his oath in the Congress building in this port city as leaders from Europe and the Americas looked on and applauded.
Organizers planned rock and folk concerts in 27 cities across Chile, and Lagos exhorted crowds to turn out. "Chileans should come celebrate to applaud the beginning of a new century, a new government," he said.
Lagos continues the decade-long rule of the Concertacion, a center-left coalition government that restored democracy in 1990. He defeated a rightist rival, Joaquin Lavin, on Jan. 16 in the closest of the three presidential elections since the end of dictatorship.
Lagos is Chile's first socialist president since Marxist Salvador Allende, toppled in the 1973 coup that ushered in Pinochet's 17-year rule. But the new leader does not espouse radicalism. The Duke University-educated economist promises improved public education, better health services for the poor and unemployment benefits in a country intent on building a social safety net to match its free-market reforms.
His main challenge: to restore Chile's economic growth rates to those enjoyed during the first years after democracy's return.
Chile became the envy of its Latin American neighbors after trailblazing a free-market path. Gross Domestic Product expanded 7.3 percent a year on average. But last year, the country slipped into its worst recession since the mid-1980s: GDP fell 1.1 percent and the unemployment rate doubled to more than 11 percent.
One in five Chileans, or 22 percent of the country's 14.5 million people, remain in poverty, though that is down from 46 percent in 1987. Lagos has promised 150,000 more jobs in his first six months in office.
And although per capita income more than doubled from $2,500 in 1990 to $5,700 in 1998, Lagos has said he understands the "legitimate sense of frustration" of those left out of the economic good fortune.
"After the election, we all unite behind the same car to push with force, and that car is called Chile," he said Saturday.
There are positive economic signs. GDP is expected to grow again by as much as 6 percent this year, and the jobless rate has dropped to less than 9 percent.
Lagos, 61, entered the public eye in 1988, when he worked to defeat a referendum that would have extended Pinochet's control until the turn of the century. In a televised debate on the referendum, Lagos pointed his finger diectly into the camera as if addressing Pinochet personally, calling him a "liar" and "ambitious" for wanting to hang onto power.
Pinochet is back home in Chile after spending 16 months in confinement in Britain fighting attempts to prosecute him for his regime's human rights abuses. He did not attend Saturday's ceremony.
Pinochet, 84 was freed after a medical report determined he was too ill to be sent to Spain to stand trial. Lagos said he supported Pinochet's release but made clear he would not interfere if the Chilean courts decide to try the ailing general, whose regime is blamed for more than 3,100 deaths and disappearances.
Written by Eva Vergara