Chile Forum

I was curios about what everyone's take was on Michelle Bachelet's performance so far as president of Chile.

I have mixed feelings about her. The biggest one being what I have dubbed in another forum the "Sendero de Santiago" project (transsantiago).

I think she was definitely better than the alternative, but I also am not happy so far with seeing the lack of action and perhaps steps backwards so far under her administration, especially in the South of Chile. Granted, this is just a little over a year, and every president takes a while to get going (well most anyway).

Given this is a first year review where does she stand?

Please give a us vote above, and your take on it below.

this is going to get hot....you knew this would get hot and you've done it anywway....this is going to get so hot...ohhhhh, this is going to be so hot and I can't wait to see actually how hot it will get...


p out


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Well that is a good start. We have established that el puelche is in heat.

My list, more or less.

Environment score: 3
She came in promising a strong pro environmental policy, and has yet to deliver. I give her 3 because the transsantiago did cleanup Santiago's air a bit, but that was really a project in the Works for a long time. On the transportation end it was a disaster, and she has really failed to do much more than rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic to solve the failures in Planning which resulted in the waisting of millions of more dollars to the same "consultants" and companies that caused the mess in the first place.

On the down side, she has pushed ahead with the Punlin road, more dam projects, and has given lots of open door invitation to the worse kind of mining organizations (strip miners and gold mining).

Schools: 6
Well she got beat up side the head by a bunch of kids in her first months in office. She managed to let a bunch of teenagers take over the country. That said, she did acknowledge that there was a real problem with the public vs. private school system and is throwing more money at it. The kids were right.

Health care: 5
Considering she is medical doctor, not much in the way of infrastructure plans that we have seen for rural public health care has happened. She did put some nice photos on cigarette packs and ban smoking in lots of public places. Which considering this is Latin America, is fairly progressive.

International flirting: 9
She has a real reputation for flirting with other world leaders. At least she knows who not to flirt with (Chavez pawed her in a very creepy way, and she did not paw him back).

She is doing as good as she can, in my view It is not a Bachellet problem but a goverment parties problem, and in a broader scope a politicians problem.

Politician parties are under the expectations of people, they eat faster than we can feed them

Yea, I would give her having to deal with a lot of the political resistance from the right, and the left; however, are a a few projects that were in the pipes from Lagos administration that seem to have tanked under hers.

overall, I do think she is good for Chile, but just needs to get the led out and a handle on more than a few things.

That said, often the best leaders are those that stay the hell out of the way. This is something we will have to see again at the end of her term.

uhhhh..c'mn she has lived more of her life outside of Chile than within its borders...she got her degree outside the country so reallyin CHile she has no degree...in CHile she is not a doctor or even titulada. She has two different children from two diffferent fathers...un-married...she was a member of the armed wing of the communist party when she was in Chile...ie bombthrowers...her father was executed by the military itself...and if you know anything about the Chilean army you know they protect thier own to the end...so it stands to wonder...what is it that he did to cause his demise?...she was supposedly arrested and tortured but we have yet to have the details of what happened to her....Chile was in a rough spot and she pitched out to live somewhere else...thats alot of faith....if you want to see what Chileans think about that then you should see the movie "johhny cien Pesos"and pay attention where the judge is asked by the interior ministry official to sign the detention order....in regard to the students and the "tomas" ...she might have agreed with the students with her mouth but remember that she went to the UN to speak during that time and on the way back stopped in Haiti...remember this is during the the revolucion de los pinguinos and she signs a check for 15 million pesos for supplies to the Haitan schools...alot of cash when your people need it at home and especialy during a crisis....

Bachilet is a communist and furthur an anarchist...she has no experience in government and doesn't know what she is doing...she is simply no better than a cuidador de autos.....she doesn't have anything to do with who or what made the cars, no idea of maitenence, flow of traffic, where its okay to park and where not too...she goes to the parties and does what they tell her to do and hopes that nothing bad will happen while she is in charge...it will catch up with her and hopefully before it gets too bad they will have someone that will keep her above the level of Sh*t that she has created for herself.

Anyone can survive one year...its the two year point that it shows and so we have a year to go before we might have to hand out the life perservers...so we have yellow and orange, what color looks best on you?


p out.

I can't candy coat it...its not in my nature.


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Much of Michelle Bachellet bio is exagerated. Her father was not executed during the military, he died in the carcel publica due a heart attak while he was arrested , Bachellet has never claimed or hinted that she suspect his father was murdered and, despite all she has been always considered into the "familia militar" (a vague term to comprise all those military related).

She was the typical exiliated story, a degree in medicine from URSS or East Germany (not sure) and an emblematic aura due she was the daugther of Gen Bachellet. Her engagment with ultraleftist was mainly sentimental (boyfriends) she has been always moderate and near to military despite all.

As Puelche said she wheigts ZERO in leadership, political wisdom, even as professional, so what? most of our politicians are in the same situation. The dificulties in goverment do not depend on her abilities or inabilities, are inherited from a long line of bad and unscrupulous goverments that preceded her.

The tragedy in all latin countries is the same: quality of politicians: if they are smart they are also robbers (e.g. Pinera), if they are honest they are also stupid or ignorantss (e.g. Evo Morales)

I think I might make this thread sticky, and we can see how she progresses.

My problem, being partial to southern Chile, is that she simply has done little to nothing outside of the central region that she was not forced to, or was moving simply to exploit the resources of the other regions. Decentralization of Chile is happening, but the central region middle management to the president are not taking the shifts seriously.

Among things I would site are growing traffic and infrastructure problems in the cities in southern Chile. They are 5-10 years behind what they need right now, let alone keeping up with the growth in 5-10 years.

Temuco, for example should be building public transportation projects on the scale of transantiago of the metro yesterday, to stay ahead of what is happening to the city now. Instead, the local street lights are throwbacks to the 1950's and traffic jams are huge. Pulotion is going to be as big a problem here, as it is in Santiago in another 5 years.

You simply can not have a city of 500,000+ all burning wood. Temuco at 200,000 people is already heavily polluted. We can site the same problems in towns and cities around the south. Infrastructure, that is funded at the federal level, is not being done.

Most of the problems are related to "consultants" required by the Government for any project that are located in Santiago, or even in other countries, that get up to 50% of the money before it hits the towns where it is suppose to be spent.

The transantiago screwup is just another example of the "consultants" and "contractors" being brought in, them screwing up, then charging the Goverment to fix it again.

There is no doubt that poiticians worldwide are scammers and any other descriptive word that we can add to the list....that goes for the Usa and Chile and denmark as well...

The difference is that the poitician in the us knows to let some crumbs fall from the table to keep everyone else busy while he splits the loot with the cronies that be...in Latin countries they don't let the crumbs fall and in fact if anyone bets the courage up or gets too close to the main meal then they end up as a side dish...so...Bachilets' inexperience makes a bad situation worse...she does not know how to manipulate all the cronies and who gets what share....in addition she will be un-able because of her inexperience to negoitiate internationaly as well and so alot of the gain that CHile has mad ein th soutern cone with her nieghbors will be lost as she will not have the upper hand.

The Bachilet political machine during the election created the misconception that is now coming to light. THey had no problem painting her all those thins to win the electionand now we are supposed to buy a ticket to a new show where she stars as a moderate. Whether its true or not the picture painted is not the same and its obvious so what else will she try to sell the CHilean public.

Chileans that went to study in east germany did not get there on the coat tails of a boyfriend...if they got as far as east germany...soviet east germany.... they had to sell a convincing story of communist involvement and dedication or they wouldn't be there..especialy in medicine. THe est germans weren't about to put up with a poseur...they wanted a payback and so they let the horses with the best chance to win the race into the training.

THe buereaucratic machination that is Chile in all regards has set rules and guideline by which everything is done(robbed and misguided) As seemingly dis-organized and ilogical it is it still has rules...water always runs downhill and you cannot stop it. It takes a well organized thief to run it all and when you get someone that has no experience in it than all the little thieves don't know how to act and we get chaos.....you can imagine if you wanted to rob a bank...do you want and experienced leader with plenty of robberies under her belt or someone that is pushing out for the first time? You can say that with someone with out experince can be robbed when we're meeting to split up the cash afterwards but remember you have to make it out of the bank alive to be able to spend th cash. Bachilet can't and doesn't know how to get us out alive.

There hasn't been much progress in the provinces and the provinces won't just suddely catch up either...we're in for 6 more years of shitty stoplights.

p out.


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To be fair, she's not been long in office. We all know that things can move slowly and there's quite a legacy for her to cope with as well, and that's on top of your standard nasty political manoevering that "democracy" generates...

Though I totally agree with the likes of dealing with Temuco energy planning, sweeping changes take time. Man, it took me 2 months to find out where to buy a decent estufa, let alone to find someone who actually KNEW how to install it - so revamping energy policy might take a while longer ....

The real problem now is that she is the first president to have the new 4 year term limit under the changes to the constitution made last year. Lagos had 6 years to get big projects going, and still get credit or blame for them. She will not have that chance. She would have to leave office for at least a full term, then try and run again.

What tends to happen with such short time limits is that politicians become risk adverse, and will only take on cosmetic fast projects, rather than doing things like building big visionary projects that they will never get credit for. It also in a sense reduces the accountability. Why would she care if some project fails? Her term is over.

[quote="admin"]The real problem now is that she is the first president to have the new 4 year term limit under the changes to the constitution made last year. Lagos had 6 years to get big projects going, and still get credit or blame for them. She will not have that chance. She would have to leave office for at least a full term, then try and run again.

What tends to happen with such short time limits is that politicians become risk adverse, and will only take on cosmetic fast projects, rather than doing things like building big visionary projects that they will never get credit for. It also in a sense reduces the accountability. Why would she care if some project fails? Her term is over.[/quote]


And that is not conducive to getting the infrastructure type projects going.

If I was President of Chile I'd want my name associated with those projects. At least that way years down the road people would say, 'Yeah, that was built when .......... was president.'

Rather than, ' Oh yeah, ........ didn't do squat when (s)he was president.'

I think the most important and most difficult thing she has accomplished is to stay moderate and neutral. The news online tells me Chavez is very unhappy because she isn't a "real" Socialist. And the US would have liked her to vote with them on the world stage. And Chile abstained from voting for either. Pinera, who ran against her and may be the next President of Chile is known in some circles as the father of credit in Chile-and I personally think loose credit has damaged people in the US and would hate to see that happen here-and he is a pretty good friend to GW Bush and his gang. Back in the states, I'd give anything for a nice moderate president. Moderation is never popular.

She has also been working on trade alliances with many countries. That seems good to me so Chile is never dependent on one country and can't be easily bullied.

I think the Transantiago is a good but really hard transition. People will love and be proud of it one of these years.

I am really not liking her environmental policies. She came in saying she was heavy pro-environment, but other than outlawing smoking indoors and the transantiago, I have seen her administration encouraging anti-environmental policies at every turn.\

Most recently the mining projects in Patagonia. She has government officials running around Patagonia holding seminars and meetings to tell the local people not to worry about the mining projects. She seems to be rubber stamping anyone who wants to exploit the resources in Southern Chile.