Michelle Bachelet
Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria (born September 29 1951) is a Chilean socialist politician and a former Health and Defense Minister of Chilean president Ricardo Lagos. She is currently a candidate for Chile's presidential election of 2005, representing the governing Coalition of Parties for Democracy (CPD).
Bachelet is a separated mother of three. She speaks Spanish, English, German, Portuguese, French and some Russian.
Life and career
Bachelet was born in Santiago to anthropologist Ángela Jeria and Air Force General Alberto Bachelet. She graduated from high school in 1969 at Liceo Nº 1 Javiera Carrera, a girls-only school. In 1970 she entered medical school at the University of Chile.
During the government of Salvador Allende, Bachelet's father was put in charge of the Food Distribution Office, and following the September 11 1973 coup, he was detained and tortured at the Air War Academy, under charges of treason. In March 1974, as a product of continuous beating, he suffered a cardiac arrest that caused his death. Bachelet and her mother were also detained and tortured, at Villa Grimaldi, a notorious detention center in Santiago. In 1975, both were exiled to Australia, where Bachelet's older brother Alberto lived. Bachelet settled in East Germany where she learned German at the Herder Institute in Leipzig and continued with her medical studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
In 1979 Bachelet returned to Chile, where she concluded her studies and graduated from medical school as a surgeon at the University of Chile in 1982. Between 1983 and 1986 she specialized in pediatrics and public health at Children's Hospital Roberto del Río. During this time, she returned to political activity, to fight for the reestablishment of democracy. She aided non-governmental organizations (NGOs) helping children of the tortured and disappeared. Between 1986 and 1990, Bachelet headed NGO PIDEE.
Following the return of democracy in 1990, she worked for the Ministry of Health and was a consultant for the Pan-American Health Organization, the World Health Organization and the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ).
Between 1994 and July 1997, Bachelet worked as adviser for the Health Undersecretary. Driven by an interest in civil-military relations, she began to study military strategy at the National Academy of Political and Strategic Studies (Anepe) in Chile, obtaining first place of her promotion, which allowed her to continue her studies in the United States at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, DC, under a presidential scholarship. In 1998 she returned to Chile to work for the Defense Ministry as Minister adviser and graduated from a Masters program in military science at the Chilean Army's War Academy.
Political life
Bachelet joined the Socialist Party of Chile in the 1970s. In 1995 she became a part of the party's Central Committee, and from 1998 until 2000 she was an active member of the Political Commission.
In 1996, she ran for mayor of Las Condes —a suburb of Santiago— for the Socialists, obtaining only 2.35%.
Bachelet was named Minister of Health by President Ricardo Lagos in March 11 2000. On January 7 2002 she was appointed Defense Minister, becoming the first woman to hold this post in the history of Chile and of Latin America.
In late 2004, following a surge of her popularity in opinion polls, Bachelet became the Socialist's candidate for the presidency, resigning on October 1 of that year from her government post in order to begin her campaign.
A primary was to be held to formally define the sole presidential candidate of the CPD. However, Bachelet's rival, Christian Democrat Soledad Alvear, a former cabinet member of the current and past two CPD administrations, pulled out of the race two months early due to a lack of support within her own party and in opinion polls.
Bachelet's main rivals in the presidential race are the right-wing Joaquín Lavín (UDI) and the center-right Sebastián Piñera (RN). Lavín ran for president in 1999, where he was defeated in a runoff by current president Ricardo Lagos. According to opinion polls, Bachelet would fall short of the 50% needed to win the first round outright in December, however she would comfortably defeat either of these candidates in the January runoff. If victorious, Bachelet would be the third elected woman leader in Latin America, after Nicaragua's Violeta Chamorro and Panama's Mireya Moscoso.
External links
- Official presidential campaign site (In Spanish)
- The woman eyeing Chile's top job (BBC News)
- The unexpected travails of the woman who would be president (The Economist)