Presidente or Presidenta?

Tomorrow, Sunday the 15th of January, Chilean voters will decide who will be the president for the next 4 years: Michelle Bachelet, candidate of the Concertación, or Sebastián Piñera, candidate of the Alianza. If elected, Bachelet will make history by becoming the first woman president of Chile. This would be a very significant event in a country where sexism and in particular machismo are all too common. On the other hand, Chile, as with some other Latin American countries has historically had many children being brought up by single mothers, this goes right back to the times of the colonization by the Spaniards. The Chilean anthropologist Sonia Montecino has written a book on this subject called "Chile - País de Huachos" (a Huacho is someone brought up by their mother, with an absent father). So as well as having a strong tendency towards machismo, Chilean men are also accustomed to women taking on both female and male roles in family life. In recent years this has increasingly been true of women in their working lives, and Michelle Bachelet might take this to another level tomorrow.

Up to now Chile has only had presidentes, Michelle Bachelet would be the first presidenta (the feminine form of the noun). In the phase leading up to the first election on the 11th of December, the Bachelet campaign used the word presidenta. Since the start of the second-round campaign, they switched to presidente, and this change did not pass unnoticed my media commentators. Some suggested that the change was made to somehow win over some of the many macho male voters who have difficulty accepting the idea of a woman as president. In the final televised presidential debate Bachelet was asked specifically about this change from Presidente to Presidenta, and her response was that Presidenta did not rhyme in the phrase "Se siente, se siente, Bachelet presidente" (this is a typical election campaign chant where "se siente, se siente" translates roughly as "you can feel it, you can feel it ). The defeated presidential candidate and now campaign manager for Piñera, Joaquín Lavín, when asked afterwards about the performance of Bachelet, singled out this response as being the finest moment of "la Michelle" as he condescendingly refers to her.

With friends like these...

Bachelet has suffered much worse in recent months, for instance when Nicolás Eyzaguirre, the Ministro de Hacienda (something like the Chancellor of the Exchequer, head of the Treasury in the UK) referred to her as "mi gordi" (my fatty) in an extended interview with the newspaper La Tercera. He later made a public apology, explaining that he was a friend of Bachelet, and that his use of the phrase in the interview must have been unconscious (unfortunately the whole of Chile was made conscious of it very rapidly by the national media). Sr Eyzaguirre went on to admit that his use of the phrase was tainted by machismo and that "Chileans must make more progress with the equal treatment of women" (interview with Radio Cooperativa, 22 August 2005). Bachelet responded "nobody calls me fatty" (interview with El Mercurio, 22 August 2005), and despite said friendship the chances of Eyzaguirre continuing as Minister look doubtful, even if Bachelet wins.

More friendly words came from Sebastián Piñera, who also claims to be a friend of Bachelet. He said in an interview with the newspaper Las Últimas Noticias (20 November 2005), "this shows that Michelle Bachelet has a grave lack of character, leadership, capacity, knowledge and will" - he was referring to the collaboration of public figures such as Luisa Duran, the wife of Presidente Lagos, in her campaign. Asked whether this meant she was not fit to be president, he replied "to be president of Chile much more is required, one will have to take difficult decisions and face very tough situations. There will be no godmothers, godfathers or walking-sticks". The reporter went on to ask "But she and you are friends, aren't you?" Piñera replied "Yes. We are friends".

... who needs enemies?

The allegations of Piñera about Bachelet stretch credibility, and may have harmed his credibility with the moderate Chileans that he has so desperately been trying to win over. Chilean political spectrum. Michelle Bachelet has by no means had an easy life, and has more achievements, abilities and experience than most, as the Wikipedia article shows. There is an anecdote that when in 2002 she became Minister of Defense (the first woman to occupy this post), she launched into her first meeting with the top brass with the words: "I am a socialist, an agnostic, separated and a woman, but we will work together". She is also a single mother of two children. Oh, and she speaks three foreign languages (English, French and German).

Piñera also has a very impressive CV (see Wikipedia article), which makes it all the more ironic that during the presidential campaign a minor scandal errupted because Piñera had "Teacher at Harvard" on his CV, when it emerged that he had only been a teaching assistant. That was not the first time he has been touched by scandal; nor is it the first time he has tried to get a woman rival out of the way by damaging their public image. In 1992 his first attempt to become president was foiled when a recording of a mobile phone conversation between him and a friend was played back to him on live TV (the so-called Piñeragate episode). In the recording, him and his friend Pedro Pablo Díaz had been discussing how to publicly expose the contradictions on key "moral" issues of Evelyn Matthei - a rival Renovación Nacional pre-candidate for the presidency - while appearing to do it in a friendly manner. Parts of the transcription that seem particularly relevant considering Piñera's recent statements about Bachelet are where he says "The advantage is that it elegantly leaves her looking like a lost little girl" and "Don't make her a victim. So say 'Listen, Evelyn, look... ' as if you were her friend. Like you are giving her advice". These quotes are based on a transcription of part of the book "Piñera versus Matthei", by Carolina García de la Huerta and Francisco Javier Piriz. The "friend" theme cropped up again recently when, in the second televised debate, Piñera alluded to how him and the rival candidate Tomás Hirsch knew each other from way back and came from very similar backgrounds. In an interview with The Clinic (7 December 2005), Hirsch flatly denied this claim, saying "He is a liar ... [before the debate] I had never met that man", and "He asked me when I started to work. I started in '78, developing photos with my brother. He replied: 'aah, see, you started before me, you were a businessman before I was'. But how was I a businessman if I developed photos in a tiny shop? My brother took photos of babies and marriages and we developed them".

Considering the available evidence, I suspect that Piñera has been systematically trying to undermine public confidence in Bachelet whilst all the time appearing to be clean and nice, like he is a friend doing her a favour by making sure she does not get a job that would make her unhappy. I hope that Chileans will not let themselves be fooled by wolves in sheeps' clothing.