Saturday, January 14, 2006

Chile Readies To Elect Woman President

Chileans got to the polls Sunday in a run-off election with a clear option of electing for the first time a woman president or a billionaire businessman for the post of president on the country for the next four years.

For the second time in four weeks Chileans will vote for a President, following the December 11 vote that did not produce a majority candidate to lead the country into its bicentennial year in 2010.

The ruling centre-left Concertacion coalition is fielding Michelle Bachelet as its Presidential candidate. The right-wing conservative opposition is resting its electoral hopes on Sebastián Piñera a billionaire businessman with stakes in Chile’s main airline and major businesses. He also owns a television network.

Polls show that Bachelet will become Chile’s first woman president. A Socialist… Bachelet is a former Defence and Health Minister in the widely successful and popular government of outgoing president Ricardo Lagos.

Bachelet says she is the continuation of the left-left ruling coalition that has governed Chile since the return to democracy in 1990. She adds that her agenda is also one of change to continue on the road towards reshaping Chile’s face.

Bachelet’s platform calls for major social reforms, that include a substantial reform to the private pension plan system that is a ticking time bomb, because half of all workers do not have a retirement pension fund and will require basic subsistence government pension if a reform does not happen soon.

Another area is an agenda of inclusion that means bringing woman to the labour force. To date only one in three women work, yet statistics show that 40 percent of all households are headed by women.

Andrés Velasco an economist with the Bachelet team outlines the campaign platform. “Michelle Bachelet will tackle early child education that includes kindergarten, early childhood education and nursery schools.”

On the issue of retirement pension fund reform, Velasco said: “a Michelle Bachelet government will implement a major pension reform. Currently many workers are not accepted by the private pension funds and in the years ahead half of the work force will not receive a cent and will need government basic pension.”

“Labour reform that brings women into the work force with flexible measures like work from home, partial day work and part-time employment,” Velasco said.

But aside from the challenges facing a potential Bachelet administration the country with her candidacy is undergoing a quiet revolution. Working women, single mothers, housewives are voting for her in droves.

In fact, Bachelet captured 300 thousand more votes from women then men in the December ballot.

Women have been empowered with Bachelet and are demanding their place in society.

Another cultural change taking place is aspirations for a freer society. Speaking in a Santiago café Patricio Westphal of the Anti-Censorship Movement, a freedom of speech organization, says a new Chile is rising.

“The Michelle Bachelet election speaks of an emerging country with diverse options from what we had known before,” Westphal said.

“Many have questioned the Bachelet phenomenon, I believe she is a phenomenon, but one that reflects a change deep inside our society, that is not instigated by fear, prudishness or male chauvinism,” Westphal points out.

That change is instigated by working women, single women, civil society organizations and a middle class that wants to be included and actively participate in more inclusive democratic society.

Pepe Auth an election analyst says polls placed Bachelet’s candidacy into the ruling coalition political establishment, according to Auth women drove those polls and are now the electoral force behind Bachelet.

“She has set aside apprehension in the electorate, we see a voter moving towards putting for the first time a woman in the Presidential chair,” Auth said.

He uses a childbirth analogy to describe what Chile is undergoing; “the country is undergoing a difficult childbirth, because it is a new historical period and it conveys a cultural change.”

“Despite that change a minority but significant segment of male voters refuse to admit that a woman can be the nation’s president.”

A poll release this week places Bachelet 5 points ahead of her challenger. Those points translate into a million votes and will be difficult to overcome in the next two days.

A curious item is that 10 percent of the electorate will not vote; according to the polling firm these voters are hard-core supporters of former dictator Augusto Pinochet.