Michelle Bachelet
From Philosopedia
Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria (29 Septebmer 1951 - )
President Bachelet is a Chilean Socialist politician, the first woman to be elected president of her country.
Openly public about her personal life, she told newspaper reporters, "I am a mother of three. Right now, I don't have a partner." A single parent with a 12-year-old daughter and two other grown children, she won in a runoff 2006 election against a center-right billionaire businessman, Sebastián Piñera, obtaining over 50% of the popular vote.
Although Chile is thought of as an ultra-conservative country, one dominated by men and the Roman Catholic Church, she openly said she is an agnostic.
Her father was a general in the Air Force and, opposed to the military government in Chile, died in prison. Bachelet - who originally was trained as a physician - worked undercover for the Socialist Youth and for weeks was held with her mother, Angelica, in torture and detention centers before being allowed in 1975 to flee the country.
She speaks Spanish, English, German, Portuguese, French, and some basic Russian. To the press, she said,
- I would say I am a socialist, of course, but I wear many hats. I was not a minister of the socialists, I was a minister of all the Chileans. I will be president for all the Chileans."
The 21 January 2006 issue of New Yorker Staats-Zeitung and Jess Rau's Germany Times has a lead article her winning the election for president. Dennis Middlebrooks, translating the article, noted:
- The article was headlined "the embodiment of all of Chile's mortal sins" (Die Verkoerperung aller Toedsuenden Chiles) and indicated that Bachelet was a socialist and an atheist who has been divorced three times and is a single mother. The article noted that in Catholic Chile open godlessness carries risks, but despite that she prevailed, in large part due to the support of the young voters, who want an end to the patriarchal power system.
In October 2009, Bachelet was described in The New York Times as
- a professed agnostic and single mother of three in a country that legalized divorce only five years ago, shattered the mold of traditional Chilean politicians in this Roman Catholic stronghold. At the start, she said, the political establishment tried to portray her as weak and disrespectful of the office of the president. “It was an important challenge in the first few years,” Ms. Bachelet, 58, said in a recent interview, noting the way other powerful women had urged her to toughen up and “scream and insult” to be respected. “I took a gamble,” she added, “to exercise leadership without losing my feminine nature.”
