President Michelle Bachelet of Chile

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Original source: Agencia Brasil
Author: Ricardo Stuckert.
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Bachelet was sworn in as President of the Republic of Chile on March 11, 2006, in a ceremony held in a plenary session of the National Congress in Valparaíso, which was attended by a record number of foreign heads of states and delegates.
Bachelet was born in Santiago, the second child of archaeologist Ángela Jeria Gómez and Air Force Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet Martínez.
Between 1985 and 1987 Bachelet had a romantic relationship with Alex Vojkovic Trier, a Communist engineer and spokesman for the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, an armed group which among other activities attempted to assassinate Augusto Pinochet in 1986.
On January 7, 2002 Bachelet was appointed Defense Minister, becoming the first woman to hold this post in a Latin American country and one of the few in the world.
In late 2004, following a surge of her popularity in opinion polls, Bachelet was established as the only CPD figure able to defeat Lavín, and she was asked to become the Socialists' candidate for the presidency.
blossoming in the post-Pinochet era, reports Justin Vogler in Santiago.
Bachelet received 46% of the vote after being hard-pressed by two strong opponents – the centre-right Sebastian Piñera and the conservative former Santiago mayor, Joaquín Lavín; the third-placed Lavín immediately pledged his support to Piñera for the January showdown.
As the first socialist to embrace the military since the 1973 coup, Bachelet has become a symbol of national reconciliation.
Michelle Bachelet has pledged to change the binominal (or first-two-past-the-post) electoral system that Pinochet bestowed on Chile’s infant democracy.
Michelle Bachelet is not the first woman to become a head of state in the hemisphere.
But as Steve Anderson, director of the Santiago Times observes: “Bachelet is the first female president in South America to be elected strictly on her own merit and not as the wife of a ‘great man.
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet is in New York this week for the United Nations 62nd General Assembly.
Earlier this week Chilean President Michelle Bachelet discussed Fujimoris extradition during an event in New York hosted by * Human Rights Watch.
Bachelet was in New York this week for the United Nations 62nd General Assembly.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, this week, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet discussed Fujimoris extradition during an event in New York hosted by Human Rights Watch.
I had the opportunity to ask President Bachelet a question, but I first want to play an excerpt of what President Bachelet said explaining Fujimoris extradition from Chile to Peru, and then answering my question.
After surviving torture under Chile's Pinochet regime, Michelle Bachelet has been helping the country reconcile its troubled history.
Michelle makes you feel like we did it together," said Teresa Boj Jonas, a nutritionist who worked for the candidate when Bachelet was the country's health minister, the post she held from 2000 to 2002.
During the campaign, Bachelet has maintained a sense of balance.
That Bachelet is alive and able to run for office is a dramatic story of survival.
In January 1975 Bachelet was arrested by a Chilean military squad.
As a member of the outlawed Socialist Party, Bachelet was part of an underground resistance and one of thousands accused of being an enemy of the military government led by Army General Augusto Pinochet.
Bachelet found herself under surveillance and then the military sought to eliminate her.
By then Bachelet was a pediatrician who specialized in trauma to children who live under dictatorships or whose parents have been kidnapped.
But to make them realize they have chosen the wrong path! That is what Michelle Bachelet has done with her past.
Bachelet came in first in the December 2005 election but did not manage to win a majority in that race, so she faced a runoff in January against her nearest opponent, billionaire businessman, Sebastian Pinera.
While three other women have won presidential elections in the Americas (Janet Jagan of Guyana, Mireya Moscoso of Panama, and Violeta Chamorro of Nicaragua), Bachelet was the first to win a seat without first becoming known through a husband's prominence.
Michelle Bachelet Background: Michelle Bachelet was born in Santiago, Chile, on September 29, 1951.
Education and Vocation: From 1975-1979 Michelle Bachelet was in exile with her mother in Australia and Germany, where she completed her education as a pediatrician.
Family: Michelle Bachelet has three children, and is separated from her husband.
In Chile, former political prisoner Michelle Bachelet has become the country first-ever female president.
Bachelet is the daughter of an air force general who was tortured and died in prison after Augusto Pinochet seized power in 1973.
In Chile, Socialist presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet was elected to be the countrys first female leader in a runoff election Sunday.
Bachelet is a 54 year-old medical doctor who was imprisoned and tortured under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
AMY GOODMAN: Michelle Bachelet is a 54-year-old doctor who was imprisoned and tortured under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
A medical student at the time, Bachelet was also arrested, along with her mother.
When I heard that Michelle Bachelet was the new president of Chile, I felt somehow the same enthusiasm, the same thrill that I felt when we defeated Pinochet in the plebiscite and the sort of hopes that opened up, the expectation that opened up when we elected the first democratic president, Patricio Aylwin, in 1990.
AMY GOODMAN: Michelle Bachelet is the new president of Chile.
And Joyce Horman, the widow of Charles Horman, who was killed when Pinochet rose to power, as we speak on this day after it was announced that Michelle Bachelet had won the Chilean election for president, the first woman elected president of Chile.
Bachelet is a self-proclaimed agnostic socialist - a divorced mother of three - whose curriculum vitae includes an M.
At the end of January, Bachelet was released and was eventually reunited with her mother.
From 1985-1987, Bachelet was romantically involved with Alex Vojkovic, a member of the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front.
In 1995, Bachelet was elected to the Socialist Party central leadership committee.
Michelle Bachelet is the current President of Chile and the first woman to hold the office in that country.
Early in her presidency, Bachelet was able to pass legislation guaranteeing health care to the elderly and reforming the electoral system.
With her single four-year term ending next December, Bachelet is trying to preserve her coalition against protests and falling approval ratings.
Bachelet has promised better health care, education and pensioners' handouts, but she faces billionaire Sebastian Pinera again in next year's election.
Michelle BacheletAKA Vernica Michelle Bachelet JeriaBorn: 29-Sep-1951Birthplace: Santiago, ChileGender: FemaleReligion: Agnostic Race or Ethnicity: HispanicSexual orientation: StraightOccupation: Head of StateNationality: ChileExecutive summary: President of Chile Born into a Roman Catholic family, Bachelet has received a large amount of press because of her agnosticism.
Extra Money, Unlikely Problem for ChileOct 17 - By Eduardo Gallardo, Associated Press WriterMichelle Bachelet has a problem other presidents would love: What to do with billions of dollars overflowing the government's coffers.
The four billion dollar economic stimulus plan announced by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has majority support, but trade unions are still worried about mass layoffs.
Bachelet was the first woman in Chilean and Latin American history to hold the Health and Defense portfolios.
In 1990 Michelle Bachelet joined the West Santiago Health Service and the National AIDS Commission, and was consultant on public health issues to several international organizations.
ECONOMY-CHILE: SANTIAGO, Jan 6 (IPS) - The four billion dollar economic stimulus plan announced by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has majority support, but trade unions are still worried about mass layoffs.
Bachelet has acquiesced to all but their costliest requests.
The law will now be changed, Bachelet has announced, making good on a promise made and broken by the four governments that preceded hers.
The extent to which Bachelet is willing to impose royalties on multinational fishing, logging and mining companies will be a yardstick of her commitment to reducing inequality.
President Michelle Bachelet is the head of state for Chile.
Council, stated that Bachelet had conf.
Jan 12 (Bloomberg) -- Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said the global economic crisis is creating “excuses” for governments to ease efforts to combat global warming.
SANTIAGO -- Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said in her New Years message to the nation that she was committed to bolstering the economy and protecting.
President Bachelet says the law is “a big step ahead in the.
small achievement in a machismo-charged culture.
mixed results, to help Chiles most needy citizens.
Released into exile in 1975, Bachelet lived in Australia before moving to East Germany, where she became active in socialist politics and studied at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
In 2000, when President Ricardo Lagos Escobar was inaugurated as Chile's first socialist president since Salvador Allende in 1973, Bachelet was appointed health minister, and in 2002 she became the first woman to lead the defense ministry.
In 2005 Bachelet was selected by the Socialist Party as its presidential candidate.
problem in two ways since taking office.
goal of the two sides is a shared one.
in South America over the past several years.
Michelle Bachelet had 46 percent of the vote, election officials said after counting 96 percent of the ballots.
Like Lagos, Bachelet has said she will leave it to the courts to deal with Pinochet and other unresolved human rights issues, a position the military has accepted.
pd_top('Story','html40','10819903','Chile elects first woman president','Socialist pediatrician Michelle Bachelet was elected Chile’s first woman president on Sunday as her opponent conceded that the former political prisoner had won.
Chile needs to unite behind the goals of reducing poverty and creating more equal opportunities so that everyone can benefit from what the country has to offer,” Bachelet said after meeting with outgoing President Ricardo Lagos and Roman Catholic church leaders.
A former defense minister, Bachelet is only the second woman elected to head a South American nation after Janet Jagan of Guyana was chosen to succeed her husband as president in 1997 after he died.
Bachelet has promised to make half her cabinet women, and she told tens of thousands of confetti-throwing supporters she will work to improve social security and education by the time her four-year term ends in 2010.
Michelle Bachelet said the measure should.
this position in the country's history.
to become the Socialists' candidate for the presidency.
of the Republic of Chile on March 11, 2006.
Michelle Bachelet JeriaMichelle Bachelet was born in Santiago, Chile on September 29, 1951.
COUP AND EXILEKnown for exceptional organizational talents developed during his time in the Air Force, General Bachelet was asked by President Allende in 1972 to head the governments Price and Supply Committees (Juntas de Abastecimiento y Precios), and remained there until General Augusto Pinochet led a coup against Allendes government on September 11, 1973 and bombed La Moneda Palace.
Early that morning, Michelle Bachelet had gone to the University of Chiles Medical Campus in the Santiago-area district of Independencia and had watched the bombing of the palace from the schools rooftop.
General Bachelet was arrested that same day and held captive in the Air War Academy, accused of treason against the homeland.
Michelle Bachelet was held along with eight other female prisoners in a cell with bunk-beds, while her mother was held in the tower, an infamous area within the camp.
Michelle Bachelet was chosen by the Central Committee of the Socialist Party to run for the city council of the Santiago-area district of Las Condes in 1996.
THE MINISTRY OF HEALTHMichelle Bachelet was named Minister of Health in President Ricardo Lagos administration in 2000.
While Bachelet was Minister of Defense, Chile commemorated the 30th anniversary of the coup dtat in 1973, and important gestures were made both by civilian politicians and the military to bring about reconciliation within the country.
Bachelet is a pediatrician and surgeon with studies in military strategy, who served as Health Minister and Defense Minister under President Ricardo Lagos.
Michelle Bachelet was elected not just because she was a woman.
Socialist paediatrician Michelle Bachelet was sworn in as Chile’s first female president last weekend in a moving ceremony of great significance for the politics of Latin America.
she would become the nations first woman president.
Michelle Bachelet is a center-left politician and the current President of Chile-the first woman to hold this position in the countrys history.
Bachelet said her inauguration "was not only the change from a great president to a woman president.
Bachelet met privately with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as well as leftist presidents Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
A group of mostly young people in the stands chanted, "Ole, Ole, Ole, Michelle, Michelle, Michelle!"Bachelet is seen as somewhat more to the left of Lagos, although equally supportive of the strict fiscal discipline and free-market economic policies considered successful in Chile.
Bachelet is the daughter of an air force general who was tortured and died in prison for opposing the 1973 military coup led by Gen.
BERKELEY Now that democracy has taken firm root in her nation, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet came to Berkeley Thursday in search of solutions to one of the fast-developing nation's most pressing challenges: how to provide its own energy.
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet receives the Berkeley Medal, the highest honor offered by UC Berkeley, from Chancellor Robert Birgeneau.
Because Bachelet was almost an hour late arriving from LBNL, though, the painstaking security measures didn't keep people from hearing her speak.
Bachelet accepted the medal "in recognition of the courage and dignity shown by the millions of Chileans I represent.
Interview with Michelle Bachelet: "Only Cleaned Wounds Can Heal"SpiegelMichelle Bachelet is being celebrated as the symbol of Chile's transformation from dictatorship to democracy.
Bachelet is South America's first democratically-elected female president.
Bachelet has three children from two men, the first of whom she married while in exile in East Germany.
Full story)Bachelet is scheduled to take office March 11.
UPI Almanac for Thursday, Jan 15, 2009.