Bachelet vows to make half her cabinet women

Bachelet vows to make half her cabinet women
= January 17 2006 at 07:44AM  
By Eduardo Gallardo

Santiago, Chile - President-elect Michelle Bachelet pledged to make at least half her Cabinet women and give all Chileans a voice after her election as the conservative Catholic nation's first female leader.

But the socialist paediatrician took a more moderate line than some of the other leftist leaders recently elected across Latin America, saying she would seek to maintain Chile's economic success and that she supports a US-backed free area as long as it takes into account the region's diversity.

Bachelet, who beat right-leaning businessman Sebastian Pinera 53 percent to 46 percent in Sunday's runoff, has come to symbolise Chile's reconciliation after the brutal divisions spawned by the 1973 military coup and 17 years of dictatorship.

"Because I was the victim of hatred, I have dedicated my life to reverse that hatred and turn it into understanding, tolerance and - why not say it - into love," she said.

But she insisted on Monday that she was tough enough to deal with hard-charging male colleagues, rejecting suggestions that coalition party leaders would largely name her Cabinet.

"I will make the decisions. I was the one who was elected," she said.

She vowed to form a government that will listen to a broader range of voices - and include a lot more women - and insisted that half her Cabinet would be women.

A 22-year-old medical student when General Augusto Pinochet led a coup in 1973, Chile's president-to-be was arrested along with her mother and forced into five years of exile. Her father, an air force officer, opposed the coup and died while in prison.

Bachelet, 54, is only the third woman directly elected president of a Latin American country and is the first to do it without rising to prominence because of a husband.

She said she would not bring radical change to the South American country of 16 million, pledging to "walk the same road" as the outgoing administration, whose free-market economic polices have helped turn Chile's economy into one of the region's strongest.

"We will continue to do well what we have been doing well, maintaining a stable economy," she said Monday.

Bachelet will have a freer hand in one respect: Her center-left governing coalition will control a majority in both houses of Congress for the first time since it took power in 1990.

During the campaign, she promised to reform labor laws, improve public education, bolster health services and raise pensions.

On Monday, Bachelet said she supports a US-backed free area extending from Alaska to Patagonia, as long as it "takes into account the diversity and differences among the various countries in the region".

The proposal for a Free Area of the Americas is opposed by some of the leaders marking the current tilt to left in Latin America, including Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's President-elect Evo Morales, two harsh critics of the United States.

Outgoing President Ricardo Lagos has promised to help Bachelet in the transition.

Lagos and Bachelet belong to the same Socialist Party as Salvador Allende, whose leftist policies prompted Pinochet's bloody coup. But the party allied with other major left-centre parties in 1990 to oust the rightist government, and their coalition has led Chile into a free-trade pact with the United States, cut inflation and fostered growth of about 6 percent a year.

The subject of gender appeared at Monday's news conference - to her dislike. A reporter asked her who would give her "a little caress", since she doesn't have a husband.

"I would have loved that if a man had been in my place he had been asked the same question," replied Bachelet, who lives with her three children aged 13 to 17. "I challenge you to ask that question to men." - Sapa-AP

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