Socialist Michelle Bachelet was sworn in as Chile’s first female president on Saturday and appealed for national unity to heal the divisions left by a military dictatorship that had imprisoned and tortured her and her parents.
Bachelet’s election in January marked a sharp political shift in traditionally conservative, male-dominated Chile. Her first act as president on Saturday was to swear in a Cabinet of 10 men and 10 women, fulfilling a promise to have equal numbers of men and women in decision-making posts.
The 54-year old paediatrician took her oath before Senate president Eduardo Frei at the Hall of Honour of Chile’s Congress in the port city of Valparaiso, where she was applauded by hundreds of people, including most of the leftist leaders that recently have come to power in South America.
On returning to Santiago, in a speech from the presidential palace balcony, she called for national unity in the wake of Chile’s 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, which activists say saw a wave of human right abuses and oppression of dissidents.
”There was a time in our history when we were divided, looking at each other with suspicion, with mistrust and rejection. Now, the time has come to look at each other again to the face, to the eyes,” she told thousands of cheering supporters in Santiago.
”The past is the past, but we do not want to repeat the mistakes of that past,” she said. ”Living in democracy, we are able to work to erase the troubles of a divided society.”
Bachelet is the daughter of an air-force general who was tortured and died in prison for opposing the 1973 military coup led by Pinochet. Then a 22-year-old medical student, she herself was briefly imprisoned and tortured along with her mother before being forced into exile.
In the speech, Bachelet paid homage to her father, General Alberto Bachelet, on the eve of the 32nd anniversary of his death. She also paid tribute to ”our armed forces, which are again the armed forces of all Chileans”.
En route to Santiago from Valparaiso, Bachelet made a brief stop in the town of Casablanca, where she vowed to listen to the voices of all Chileans.
”I want a government in which citizens have an active participation,” she said. ”A government at the service of people.”
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who met Bachelet for 30 minutes ahead of the ceremony, described her election as a triumph of democracy.
Rice told Chile’s state television that she expects US-Chile relations will remain as close under Bachelet as they were under her predecessor and fellow Socialist, Ricardo Lagos.
Also on hand was the South American leader who most vexes Washington, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who gave the new president a kiss on the hand.
Bachelet appeared relaxed during the ceremony as she repeatedly waved in response to greetings from people in the stands. She smiled broadly when someone shouted: ”We love you, Michelle!”
Lagos removed the presidential sash he was wearing and handed it to Frei, a former president himself, who placed it on Bachelet.
Bachelet is seen somewhat more to the left of Lagos, although equally supportive of the strict fiscal discipline and free-market economic policies that helped make Chile one of the region’s success stories.
She’s also expected to maintain Lagos’s foreign policy, including close ties with the US.
Chávez, a close friend of Cuban President Fidel Castro and a persistent critic of the US, saluted Bachelet’s inauguration as further sign of a leftist swing in Latin America, following the victories of Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil.
”South America has changed,” he said. ”A worker is president of Brazil — there comes Lula; an Indian is president of Bolivia; a woman is president of Chile, and in Venezuela, a revolutionary soldier, which is what I am.”
Bachelet, a separated mother of three, is the first directly elected Latin-American leader who didn’t rise to power as the widow of a powerful husband, and she has promised to bring more women into Chilean politics. — Sapa-AP