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Chile's president-elect announces Cabinet with half women
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-31 10:26
President-elect Michelle Bachelet unveiled a Cabinet on Monday that fulfilled
her campaign promise to give half the jobs to women and kept a balance among the
four parties in her center-left coalition.
Among the key posts given to women by Bachelet, Chile's first woman president
and the first in Latin America without a powerful husband, were the defense and
economy ministries. She also named a woman as her chief of staff.
"This Cabinet is in line with the major challenges we have ahead," said the
54-year-old, socialist pediatrician, who takes office on March 11 following her
win in January 15 elections.
"These are people with considerable intellectual, professional and political
prestige," she said of the 10 men and 10 women in her Cabinet.
Bachelet said that as soon as she takes office, she will send bill congress
for the creation of two new ministries _ public security and environment.
She stressed that, as promised, half her ministers are women. She named
engineer Vivianne Blanlot as head of the Defense Ministry, an agency Bachelet
herself led from 2002 to 2004 under outgoing President Ricardo Lagos.
The Finance Ministry will be headed by Andres Velasco, an independent,
fiscally conservative U.S.-educated economist to the key post of Finance
Minister. Velasco is expected to continue the economic policies of outgoing
government, which maintained a healthy fiscal surplus and inflation firmly under
control.
Two important posts went to the Christian Democratic Party, a member of her
coalition, with Andres Zaldivar getting the Interior Ministry and Alejandro
Foxley the Foreign Ministry.
The Secretary-General of the Government, a Cabinet post that is the
presidential spokesman, will be Ricardo Lagos Weber, son of the incumbent
president, and a key negotiator of several free trade accords signed by Chile in
recent years, including with the United States.
Females appointments include Paulina Veloso as Bachelet's chief of staff,
Ingrid Antonijevic as economy minister and Clarisa Hardy as planning minister.
Bachelet's nominations kept a clear balance among the parties making up the
Coalition for Democracy that backs her: 7 Christian Democrats, 9 from the two
socialist groups, one from the smaller Social Democratic party. Three ministers
are independents.
Bachelet's election has generated demands from women in Chile and the region
for more political power and greated social equality.
There remains only a handful of women with real political power in Latin
America _ the shortlist also includes Argentina's First Lady and Senator
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and Peruvian former congresswoman Lourdes Flores,
who predicted that Bachelet's success will help pave the way for her victory in
Peru's presidential elections in April.
There have been at least half a dozen female presidents in Latin America
before, but Bachelet is the first to earn her place without the help of a
husband's political career in a region where many countries were slow to give
women the right to vote.
Following her election win, thousands of people gathered outside her campaign
headquarters with women donning replicas of Chile's red-white-blue presidential
sash bought from street vendors.
Bachelet is seen by many women and men alike as having played a key role in
reconciliation among Chileans after the deep divisions stemming from the 1973-90
dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
Noting that Bachelet herself was jailed and tortured under Pinochet, Cardinal
Francisco Javier Errazuriz immediately after her election praised Bachelet "for
overcoming hatred. She is a sign of great confidence."
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