MICHELLE BACHELET: A BREAK WITH CHILE´S MALE-DOMINATED POLITICS

"This Sunday, 11 December 2005, could be regarded as just another of Chile’s routine polling days since the return to democracy in 1990. Well into the hot, southern-hemisphere summer and with bars and restaurants closed, the occasion will be used to hold a family gathering or make a day trip to the seaside, perhaps after voting early in the morning. Formally, voting is compulsory, but in reality it isn’t, since no sanctions are enforced on non-voters. Chileans, however, follow tradition and tend to turn out at the polls in large numbers.

If one tradition will be upheld on Sunday, this time there is a reason for Chilean voters to break with another – the male domination of Chilean politics. The leading candidate, who seems certain at least to go through to the second-round polls on 15 January, is the socialist candidate (and defence minister, 2002-04), Michelle Bachelet. Bachelet, 54, is a medical doctor who as a young student was imprisoned and tortured after General Augusto Pinochet’s military coup of 1973; she is also divorced and a single mother, until recently an important minus in a conservative, Catholic society".