Elect two women on January 15th!
So, the bad news is that Michelle Bachelet was not elected president of Chile in yesterday’s first round (she would have needed more than 50 percent, but got “only” 45,9 percent). The good news is that Bachelet has a very good chance winning against Sebastian Pinera in the second round on January 15th. Funny enough, on January 15th Finland’s Tarja Halonen might do what Bachelet almost did yesterday; get more than 50 percent in the first round as the female, center-left candidate in a presidential election.The polls are giving Halonen around 58 percent right now, a fantastic figure giving the fact that there are eight candidates in the race. There is another televised debate in Finland on Wednesday, and if Halonen does well and if all my Finnish social democratic friends work hard – we might get the Chilean-Finnish double on January 15th.
As always, The Economist has a lot of good articles about the elections in Chile, here is one, and do not forget to also click the fantastic “Get article background” button. BBC News also has an informative article, and one somewhat simplistic but fantastic sentence explains why I support both Bachelet and the party supporting Tarja Halonen.
"[S]he [Michelle Bachelet] is expected to follow many of the successful policies of President Ricardo Lagos - free-market economics mixed with leftist social programmes."
January 15th. Two strong women of the center-left will become (Michelle Bachelet) and be re-elected (Tarja Halonen) Presidents, respectively. Remember where you read it first.
posted by Eric Sundström at 10:18 am
4 Comments:
Snälla Eric, kan du inte länka till artiklarna i nya fönster? Så slipper man försvinna från din sida..
Svenski- you know better than to trust the Economist. Bachelet is actually a bit weaker in the second round. Piñera won only 20% of the vote, but he'll double that by gaining the 19% that voted for Lavín, who is from the same coalition. So now the math is a lot closer- 46% for her vs. 40% for him. I think she'll pull it out, but won't have the kind of mandate a first-round win would have given her...
the good news is that the Concertación now runs the Senate, having stripped the military of its apppointed Senate seats in a constitutional reform... Pinochet's clawed hands have been removed from another part of the government...
Mike - the good thing is that if you start with The Economist and then wait for some old friend from Johns Hopkins SAIS with special knowledge to jump in, you get pretty to close to knowing what's going on. This is a case in point...
Flattery will get you everywhere, Eric.
a good summary of the situation was in the FT this morning
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