Bachelet - new politicy approach or continuity?

So Bachelet made it! And with comfortable 54.5% against 46.5% from Piñera. This is quite amazing in such a conservative society as is Chile's. Even more so since she is divorced (twice), socialist and agnostic. It is more the trajectory of a single and special woman with a tragic past and a complicated way until reaching the presidency. Her father was a constitutionalist general who was imprisoned and killed under Pinochet's dictatorship, she went in exile with her mother, first to Australia then to Eastern Germany and graduated in Berlin's Humbolt university in medicine (she is a paediatrician). She then returned to Chile undercover in the late seventies and joined the socialist party, climbing slowly and participating actively in the party's rule of Chile in the last 16 years.

Somehow she symbolises a cultural change in Chile and very clearly the population have reaffirmed that they don't want anything else more to do with the times and clique of Pinochet. Yet her result was also the merit of the "Concertación" (political alliance between socialists and christian democrats) and the achievements of the past 15 years. Between 96 and 2005, Chile grew on average 4.2% a year (Latin America only at 2.8%). In 2003, according to Cepal - Comisión economica para America Latina y Caribe - Chile was, among 18 countries in the region, the one with the lowest poverty index (19% of poor, compared to a regional average of 44%, 37.1 in Brazil). Also extreme poverty was reduced by half between 1990 and 2003 to 4.7%. And also a public finances in very good state, low taxes. So, to a certain extent, the people have also voted for the continuity of the liberal policies, yet with a social side. And now with a new approach which will bring more equal opportunities.

For many it is too early to see the direction which Bachelet will take in many respects. She has said that she sees Mercosur/Mercosul and Alca as being compatible and that she will give priority to relations with other Latin American countries and also hopes to achieve higher regional integration. Other Latin American countries however, like Argentina and Brazil, fear that little will change in Chile's approach to Latin America, continuing to favour Alca and privileged relations with the USA.

According to Chilean economist Marta Lagos (from the NGO Latinobarometro which monitors democracy evolution in the continent, as mentioned by Folha de S. Paulo), Bachelet could be compared to Evita Perón with the difference that Bachelet is the antithesis of populist, in the way that she can also induce (and is a result of it) a cultural change in the country. However Lagos does not consider Bachelet to be a trend in Latin America but more an exception (yet there is another woman well placed in the surveys for Peru's next presidential elections), since the number of women in Parliament and in management places is very reduced. Yet she could symbolise a trend to come.
But the future will tell how Bachelet will be able to keep her promises for more equal rights, political renewal and better relations with Latin American neighbours.