Chileans go to the polls on Sunday and are expected to elect the South American country's first female president, a socialist who is leading in the race against a moderate conservative billionaire. Michelle Bachelet, a medical doctor and former defence minister who was imprisoned and tortured early in the 1973-1990 Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, has a 5-point lead over opposition candidate Sebastian Pinera, the latest poll showed. Chile has a reputation as a very conservative country and it legalised divorce only two years ago. A recent dramatic shift to more liberal social values has aided Bachelet, a separated mother of three. I
If she wins, Bachelet will be the fourth consecutive president from the centre-left coalition that formed in the 1980s to oppose Pinochet and has run the country of 16 million people since he stepped down in 1990. A Bachelet victory would also consolidate a shift to the left in Latin America, where different shades of leftists run Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela. A socialist will soon take office in Bolivia and a leftist is favoured to win Mexico's presidential election in July. Last month, Bachelet won 46 percent of the vote in a four-way first-round presidential election. It was short of the absolute majority she needed to avoid a January runoff against Pinera, 56, who came in second with 25 percent.
NO JITTERS ON WALL STREET
Bachelet pledges deep reforms to Chile's private pension system, which is admired around the world as a model but is considered expensive and inadequate at home.
While Latin American elections often give investors the jitters, Wall Street has taken Chile's presidential campaign in stride, confident that whoever wins will follow the prudent fiscal policies that have helped to make this the region's most stable economy.
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=6384104&cKey=1137299717000If elected, Bachelet has said, at least half the members in her cabinet would be women. She has promised child care for low-income mothers and reforms of the country's pension system to provide broader coverage at a lower cost. "We can build a country where no one will be sentenced to live in poverty and where each day we will work toward an even freer society," Bachelet told 200,000 supporters in Santiago at a rally ending her campaign this past week.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/14/AR2006011401033.html