Dr. Michelle Bachelet, Chile's Defense Minister, is being mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2006. What an incredible journey she has made:
In 1974, soldiers blindfolded and beat Michelle Bachelet in a prison camp. Now thousands of servicemen salute her when she reviews troops at Chile's annual military parade.
Bachelet, 52, a doctor, former health minister and Latin America's first woman defense minister, is the face of the dramatic power shifts in Chile, where socialists ran things in the early 1970s, were quashed in a military coup and a long dictatorship and then returned to power as moderates.
She is also high on the list of possible presidential candidates ahead of 2006 elections.
"The very fact that women are being mentioned as possible candidates for the first time in Chile's history is an advance, not just for women, but for democracy," Bachelet told Reuters. But she said it was too early to say whether she will seek nomination as a presidential candidate.
Chile may be the most socially conservative country in Latin America. For example, it is the only Latin American country where divorce is still illegal. This alone is encouraging, but there's more to her story:
Bachelet does not like to talk about it, but she and her mother were arrested and held at a concentration camp for several months after the Sept. 11, 1973, military coup that launched the 17-year dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
The two then went into exile outside Chile for five years. Her father, an air force general who worked in the socialist government of ousted president Salvador Allende, died in 1974 of a heart attack in a prison where he was tortured with electric shocks.
One of the continuing unfortunate legacies of Pinochet's rule is the strength and independence from civilian control that the Chilean military has:
A Pinochet-era constitution gave the armed forces four seats in the Senate that are not subject to election.
The president does not have the power to fire commanders in chief, and the same commanders are part of a security council that limits presidential power. The military budget, which includes a big subsidy from state-owned copper company Codelco, is off limits to Congress and the executive.
"A country cannot be left naked, without defense, because you can't just improvise defense when you need it. Today, since we are at peace, fortunately all the spending looks superfluous, but defense is about prevention," Bachelet said.
This year's military budget is 1.3 percent of gross domestic product, which is forecast at about $65 billion. Bachelet rejects criticisms that that is a bigger proportion than most of Chile's neighbors, saying that each country uses a different methodology to measure the military budget.
The subsidy from Codelco, the copper industry that Allende nationalized and Pinochet kept nationalized (kind of shatters that image as the great free marketer doesn't it?) earmarks 10% of Codelco's earnings for the military. Chile's current President, Ricardo Lagos (a socialist) wants to privatize Codelco. I do not claim to be an expert on Chile's security, however, I also do not think that their military needs to be as big as it is. I also happen to think that it should be under civilian control. This is one legacy of Pinochet's that needs to be changed, but with a senate including unelected senators stacked against such a change it doesn't seem likely.
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