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.

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.

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.

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.