Chile's president-elect announces Cabinet with half women
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-31 10:26

President-elect Michelle Bachelet unveiled a Cabinet on Monday that fulfilled her campaign promise to give half the jobs to women and kept a balance among the four parties in her center-left coalition.

Among the key posts given to women by Bachelet, Chile's first woman president and the first in Latin America without a powerful husband, were the defense and economy ministries. She also named a woman as her chief of staff.

"This Cabinet is in line with the major challenges we have ahead," said the 54-year-old, socialist pediatrician, who takes office on March 11 following her win in January 15 elections.

"These are people with considerable intellectual, professional and political prestige," she said of the 10 men and 10 women in her Cabinet.

Bachelet said that as soon as she takes office, she will send bill congress for the creation of two new ministries _ public security and environment.

She stressed that, as promised, half her ministers are women. She named engineer Vivianne Blanlot as head of the Defense Ministry, an agency Bachelet herself led from 2002 to 2004 under outgoing President Ricardo Lagos.

The Finance Ministry will be headed by Andres Velasco, an independent, fiscally conservative U.S.-educated economist to the key post of Finance Minister. Velasco is expected to continue the economic policies of outgoing government, which maintained a healthy fiscal surplus and inflation firmly under control.

Two important posts went to the Christian Democratic Party, a member of her coalition, with Andres Zaldivar getting the Interior Ministry and Alejandro Foxley the Foreign Ministry.

The Secretary-General of the Government, a Cabinet post that is the presidential spokesman, will be Ricardo Lagos Weber, son of the incumbent president, and a key negotiator of several free trade accords signed by Chile in recent years, including with the United States.

Females appointments include Paulina Veloso as Bachelet's chief of staff, Ingrid Antonijevic as economy minister and Clarisa Hardy as planning minister.

Bachelet's nominations kept a clear balance among the parties making up the Coalition for Democracy that backs her: 7 Christian Democrats, 9 from the two socialist groups, one from the smaller Social Democratic party. Three ministers are independents.

Bachelet's election has generated demands from women in Chile and the region for more political power and greated social equality.

There remains only a handful of women with real political power in Latin America _ the shortlist also includes Argentina's First Lady and Senator Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and Peruvian former congresswoman Lourdes Flores, who predicted that Bachelet's success will help pave the way for her victory in Peru's presidential elections in April.

There have been at least half a dozen female presidents in Latin America before, but Bachelet is the first to earn her place without the help of a husband's political career in a region where many countries were slow to give women the right to vote.

Following her election win, thousands of people gathered outside her campaign headquarters with women donning replicas of Chile's red-white-blue presidential sash bought from street vendors.

Bachelet is seen by many women and men alike as having played a key role in reconciliation among Chileans after the deep divisions stemming from the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Noting that Bachelet herself was jailed and tortured under Pinochet, Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz immediately after her election praised Bachelet "for overcoming hatred. She is a sign of great confidence."