|
Woman wins Chile presidency
16/01/2006 08:06 - (SA)
|
|
|
 |
|
| Socialist candidate Michelle Bachelet waves to supporters after winning the run-off presidential elections in Santiago, Chile. (Claudio Santana, AP) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Santiago - Socialist Michelle Bachelet won Chile's presidential election on Sunday, becoming the Andean nation's first woman leader while further consolidating Latin America's move to the left.
Bachelet, a paediatrician and former political prisoner, handily beat her conservative challenger, multimillionaire businessman Sebastian Pinera. With 97.5% of about 7.2 million votes counted, Bachelet had 53.4% of the vote to Pinera's 46.5%, official results showed.
Bachelet's centre-left coalition has governed Chile since the end of the 1973-90 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinchet, and incumbent president Ricardo Lagos in a speech to the nation urged the coalition to remain united behind the president-elect.
She will join other leftist leaders in the region including Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and newly elected Evo Morales of Bolivia, but indicated she will not bring about radical change to the South American country of 16 million.
'She is a hero'
"We will continue to walk the same road," she said in her victory speech on Sunday, making it clear she intends to maintain the coalition's free-market economic polices that have turned Chile's economy into one of the region's strongest.
Lagos named Bachelet health minister in 2000 and two years later made her defence minister, a position in which she won praise for helping heal divisions between civilians and military left over from the dictatorship.
Bachelet, 54, is only the third woman to be 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 Chamorro and Moscoso, did not follow a politically prominent husband into power.
"Who would have said, 10, 15 years ago, that a woman would be elected president," Bachelet, a single mother of three, said before cheering supporters.
As Bachelet ended her speech in a Santiago hotel, thousands of people outside started a carnival-like party, dancing and singing to the rhythm of a popular local tropical music band.
Harvard-trained economist Pinera conceded defeat, calling Bachelet "president elect" in an emotional speech to supporters.
"I congratulate Michelle Bachelet for her victory," he said. "I also desire Michelle the greatest possible success."
As thousands celebrated in the streets across the country, Lagos said "it will be an honour for me to deliver the presidential sash to a Chilean woman" on March 11.
A 22-year-old medical student at the time of Pinochet's coup, Bachelet was arrested along with her mother and later forced into five years of exile, first in Australia, then in communist East Germany.
- AP
|
