Word: bachelet
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...takes office May 8, has a talent for dialogue and coalition building, which she'll need when she faces Costa Rica's ultra-fractured Congress. Her center-right credentials set her apart from the other female heads of state in Latin America today: Chile's outgoing President, Michelle Bachelet, is a moderate socialist; Argentina's Cristina Fernández represents her Peronist Party's left wing; and the leading candidate in this year's Brazilian presidential election, Dilma Rousseff, hails from the leftist Workers Party. At the same time, Kaufman notes, Chinchilla follows a string of recent center-right presidential...
Billionaire Sebastián Piñera won Chile's election on Jan. 17, making him the first conservative elected President in more than half a century. Piñera edged out Eduardo Frei, the center-left former President, who was backed by the widely popular outgoing President, Michelle Bachelet. Piñera won almost 52% of the vote, breaking the center left's hold on the office, which began after Augusto Pinochet's brutal dictatorship ended in 1990. Analysts attributed the result to Frei's lackluster campaign and Piñera's ability to separate himself from the legacy of Pinochet's rule...
...uprising, which has left four Mapuche dead and more than 100 arrested or convicted, has also spawned a political quandary for President Michelle Bachelet. She has resorted to a controversial antiterrorist law - developed during the brutal, 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet - to prosecute Mapuche militants. The measure, used by Pinochet to hound political opponents, allows fewer pretrial rights for defendants, who can be accused by anonymous and masked witnesses. It also imposes longer prison sentences and augments the powers of the police and judicial system - never a comfortable prospect in a country that is still shaking the ironfisted...
...Bachelet had promised before taking office in 2006 that she would not use the law in Mapuche cases. She and her government, however, insist they have no choice at this point. "We've decided to invoke the antiterror law to go after these groups of people who are set on perpetrating crimes, disorder and unrest in a region seeking peace and harmony," Chile's Deputy Interior Secretary, Patricio Rosend, said recently. (See why Chile's Atacama Desert has become a tourist destination...
...Bachelet, a member of Chile's Socialist Party, and her center-left coalition, the Concertación, have been criticized for being soft on criminals. Many political analysts suggest that with presidential elections set for Dec. 13 - and with the Concertación well behind the conservatives in voter polls - the left may hope that employing the antiterror law will bolster its law-and-order bona fides. Sebastian Piñera, the billionaire businessman who leads the polls, has made security and crime-fighting a centerpiece of his campaign...