VALPARAïSO, Chile: Socialist Michelle Bachelet took the oath of office as president of Chile yesterday, returning to power after four years with a reform agenda to reduce social disparities in this prosperous South American country.
The 62-year-old was sworn in at a solemn ceremony in the Congress that was charged with symbolism.
“Yes, I promise,” she said as she took the oath from the new Senate leader Isabel Allende.
Allende, the daughter of ousted president Salvador Allende who died in a 1973 coup, handed Bachelet the presidential sash and fervently embraced the returning president.
“The historic image of two women simultaneously occupying the two highest positions of state will go around the world,” Allende said earlier.
Gathered for the transfer of power were presidents from around the region as well as US Vice President Joe Biden.
Notably absent was Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, who cancelled at the last minute.
Five weeks of unrest in Venezuela, which has left at least 21 dead, including a Chilean woman, was to be taken up today here at a meeting of South American foreign ministers.
Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, Peru’s Ollanta Humala, Mexico’s Enrique Pena Nieto, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Uruguay’s Jose Mujica were among the presidents attending.
Bachelet succeeds Sebastian Pinera, who said he was leaving his successor “a better country than the one we had four
years ago.” Pinera, barred from running for a second consecutive term, is leaving office at the peak of his popularity.
Bachelet was Chile’s first female president the first time she held the office, from 2006 to 2010. In this second stint at the helm, she will have a chance to cement her legacy as a transformative leader who experienced firsthand the horrors of the 1973-1990 Augusto Pinochet military dictatorship.
During that dark period, Bachelet was tortured, fled the country, and then returned years later to work as a pediatrician, eventually entering politics.
Her father died after being tortured for remaining loyal to leftist president Salvador Allende in the 1973 coup that saw Pinochet come to power.
AFP
