Santiago, Chile – Voters in this booming South American country elected their first woman president, Michelle Bachelet, in a Sunday runoff that added to a rising wave of woman leaders in Latin America.
The 54-year-old physician, who served as health minister and defense minister under popular outgoing President Ricardo Lagos, won 53.5 percent of the vote, based on results from 97.5 percent of voting sites.
Billionaire businessman Sebastian Pinera won 46.5 percent of votes and conceded defeat early Sunday night.
Analysts said Bachelet’s win signaled a major political shift in a country known as one of the Western Hemisphere’s most conservative countries, where traditional religious values closely guide public policy.
Bachelet has said she is an atheist. She has been long separated from her husband and has raised her three children largely on her own.
She also speaks five languages and has studied in the United States and Germany.
She was imprisoned and tortured during the early years of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship and lived in European exile in the late 1970s.
“This will bring about enormous amounts of change that people aren’t even aware of yet,” said Marta Lagos, regional head of the public research firm MORI. “This will be a government like her candidacy, more direct, more transparent, more people-oriented.”
Bachelet is the second woman to be elected head of state in South American history. The voters of tiny Guyana elected Janet Jagan, widow of longtime President Cheddi Jagan, in 1997.
Bachelet joins a recent surge of woman politicians in Latin America who have succeeded in national politics despite traditional male control over political and economic power.
In neighboring Argentina, first lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner won a hard-fought race for a Senate seat in October and regularly outshines her husband, President Nestor Kirchner, on the national scene.
In Peru, former congresswoman Lourdes Flores is running a close race against nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala for her country’s presidency.
Bachelet based her campaign largely on internal issues such as boosting education and reforming the country’s pension system. She also argued for more gender equality in Chilean society and pledged to appoint just as many men as women to her Cabinet.
