The charm of Michelle Bachelet
Standing on the podium to an overflow crowd President Michelle Bachelet delivered an ambitious agenda for Chiles future. The Brookings Institution speech on Monday in…
President Barack Obama meets with Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet, Monday, June 30, 2014, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Standing on the podium to an overflow crowd President Michelle Bachelet delivered an ambitious agenda for Chiles future. The Brookings Institution speech on Monday in Washington marked the return of a much admired and deeply loved woman.
SEE ALSO: President Bachelet wants to strengthen relations with U.S.
Her lifes story reflects the history of her country in a time of transition. With her re-election to a serve a second term as Chiles president the narrative continues.
Michelle Bachelet captures the audience
What is immediately apparent when you meet Bachelet is a warmth and sense of humanity that captures even the most serious audience of Washington policymakers. She smiles and laughs easily.
This is a woman who delayed her departure to Washington for her first official meeting with President Obama so she could console her national soccer team that just been defeated by Brazil in the World Cup games last Saturday.
Bachelet combines caring maternal instincts with the steely toughness of a global leader of South Americas most economically successful nation. She is also a loyal friend who never forgets where she came from or those who she met along the way.
I first met Michelle Bachelet in the mid-1990s when she was studying civil-military relations at the Inter-American Defense College.
She wanted to reach out to other women who were involved in security studies in the United States. I remember her joining a group of us at the Army Navy Club in Washington to share some thoughts about her own career path.
And she never forgot her friends, other women around the world who could break the glass ceilings of power and machismo to make a better world. When she was elected president in 2006 she invited a group of us to her first inauguration. We all celebrated with her in Santiago with the largest delegation of women attending the event.
When Bachelet left the presidency in 2010 she was not finished with her agenda of helping others. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon named her the first director of the newly created UN Women. There she fought for equality, justice and prevention of violence, traveling the globe in support of inclusion, and bringing women into peace processes. Now she represented half the worlds population.
And almost eight years ago to this day in 2006, two months after her inauguration, she was in Washington to celebrate women in politics sharing a podium with the Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as she contemplated her presidential run in 2008. Like her North American counterpart, Michelle Bachelet has similar rock-star staying power.
Daughter of an air force general who once served as a military attaché in Washington, she learned her English and her love of the United States in the public schools of Bethesda, Maryland. But she also experienced the personal tragedy of military rule.
Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet speaks while meeting with President Barack Obama, Monday, June 30, 2014, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
After General Augusto Pinochets brutal 1973 coup that ended with the ouster and death of President Salvador Allende her father was imprisoned and died. Michelle and her mother were thrown into the infamous Villa Grimaldi, an urban detention and torture center outside of Santiago. They were both expelled from Chile in 1975.
In exile she continued her medical studies, but returned to Chile in 1979 to receive her degree. Her career as a pediatrician led her to the role of policy maker as embarked on a leadership path. In 2000 she became Minister of Health in the government of Ricardo Lagos.
She also made the most of her military roots. She studied at the Inter-American Defense College in the mid 1990s. By 2002 she had become Latin Americas first woman minister of Defense.
Under her guidance she led a reform of the military which included the reform of compulsory military service, expansion of Chiles peacekeeping role at the United Nations, and greater inclusion of women into the armed forces. In 2006 as a single mother in a Catholic country Michelle Bachelet became Chiles first woman president.
On Monday, in her first official visit to Washington as Chiles head of state, Bachelet she made it clear that she is a leader with a mission. Inequality is unacceptable. Not acting on inequality represents the biggest risk Chile faces today.
She reiterated her 2013 campaign promise to create the first government of the new political and social majority that allows us to confront inequality and build a more inclusive Chile.
By 2020 Chile will have a per capita income of a middle income country. But to sustain this growth the nation will need to go beyond its reliance on copper mining to support the dynamic vision that Bachelet proposed. Reaching east through the new Pacific Alliance Chile, along with Peru, Colombia and Mexico will build a new regional trading bloc with Asia as one way to expand trade opportunities for the region.
At home Bachelet also aims high. She wants to guarantee a free quality education for all citizens and announced plans to build two new universities in underserved regions of Chile. She outlined five specific goals to achieve her vision.
First, Chile must increase its productivity and competitiveness through rewarding innovation. Second, it must diversity its economic base to generate more income. Third, the nation must focus on more targeted training of citizens. Fourth, there must be specific plans to increase the participation of women in the formal economy.
And finally, Chile must become energy secure by diversifying its energy matrix. It must shift from a nation that imports 60 percent of its primary energy to one that uses its renewable resources (hydro, solar, and wind) to support domestic energy needs.
Listening to Michelle Bachelets agenda I could only recall something she told me several years ago when I asked her how she been able to balance her own vision of a better world with the demands of her own personal life. What she told me was this: You CAN do everything. But you must do what you can, one thing at a time.
Knowing Michelle I am certain she will achieve her ambitious agenda for Chile. She will also provide lessons for other women leaders that endure, not through a charm offensive, but through a genuine commitment to equality and justice for all.
SEE ALSO: Michelle Bachelet has crushing win in Chiles presidential election
Johanna Mendelson Forman is a Scholar-in Residence at American University School of International Service and a Senior Advisor at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC.
