Michelle Bachelet, the centre-left candidate, was re-elected president of Chile on Sunday, ending the country’s brief flirtation with the centre-right, since its return to democracy in 1990, after Sebastián Piñera was elected four years ago.
A paediatrician by profession, Ms Bachelet, 62, is the daughter of an air force general who died of a heart attack in prison in 1974, after being tortured by coup leader General Augusto Pinochet’s goons; she was herself tortured by the dictator’s secret police in the notorious Villa Grimaldi before going into exile.
Ms Bachelet rose to political prominence in 2000, when she was named Minister of Health; in 2002, she became Minister of Defence, the first woman to hold that post. In 2006, she was elected Chile’s first female president, the first woman not previously married to a former prominent political leader to be elected president of a Latin American country.
Ms Bachelet, generally regarded as a warm and maternal figure, left office in January 2010 with the highest level of public approval of any Chilean president, 84%, and with both her international stature and Chile’s considerably enhanced. She is the first president since 1952 and the first woman to be re-elected – that is, elected again, after a mandatory sabbatical, since Chile’s constitution does not allow a second successive presidential term.
At the head of the New Majority coalition, comprising the four parties that made up the Concertación coalition that governed Chile for the 20 years preceding Mr Piñera’s election, along with the Communist Party and other progressive forces, she won 46.6% of the popular vote in the first round of elections on November 17. This was not enough for an absolute majority over her right-wing rival Evelyn Matthei, hence the second round held last Sunday. It was also the first time in Chile’s history that two women had contested the presidency.
In the second round, Ms Bachelet won just over 62% of the vote, the highest proportion of votes any presidential candidate has won since 1989, prompting her to assert in her victory speech, that “those of us who want change are in the vast majority.”
Analysts have pointed out, however, that this was the lowest turnout since the country’s return to democracy. Approximately one million people who voted in the first round chose not to do so in the second. The overall abstention rate was a massive 58%, equating to 7.8 million voters staying away. But this was also the first time that voting was voluntary and many have conceded that the significant advantage gained by Ms Bachelet in the first round would have caused many voters to stay away since they would have regarded her as a sure winner.
Those aligned with the outgoing government have warned the incoming administration, which assumes office in March, that the low turnout means that there is no blank cheque from the electorate to push through their reform proposals, especially with regard to addressing the country’s persisting economic inequalities, tax reform, education, health care, social protection and social change.
On the other hand, the president-elect will have a healthy majority in both chambers of the parliament, a luxury she did not enjoy during her first term. Ms Bachelet has accordingly set herself an ambitious reform programme to continue with and build on Concertación’s overarching aim of ensuring that the fruits of Chile’s impressive and sustained economic growth in the past 30 years are shared more equitably with all strata of the population.
She has promised 50 reforms in the first 100 days but there are more long-term and far-reaching proposals. For example, Ms Bachelet intends to raise corporate taxes from 20% to 25% over four years to entrench the “social right” of free education right up to the tertiary level. She has promised that, by the end of her term, the state will pay the tuition fees of the poorest 70% of Chile’s higher education students. Clearly, as she herself has admitted, the reform agenda will go beyond her four years in office.
It will not be easy. The reforms will be costly even as the country’s growth rate slows, with the drop in the price of copper, the main export. There will be resistance from more conservative elements in Chilean society and those at the far left of the New Majority will push for more radical change. Expectations, generally high, will have to be tempered by political and economic realities.
Michelle Bachelet, in dealing with the challenges ahead, may yet cement her place in history as a truly transformative leader beyond breaking the gender barrier.
