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I'm Steve Ember with IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.
This week, the people of Chile elected their first female president --
and Africa's first elected woman president took office.
In Chile, Michelle Bachelet won fifty-three percent of the ballots in a
second vote held Sunday. She was the Socialist candidate of the ruling
coalition. Opposition candidate Sebastian Pinera, a businessman of great
wealth, had forty-six percent.
Michelle Bachelet is fifty-four years old. She is a medical doctor, and
a single mother with three children. Her father was an adviser to
Socialist president Salvador Allende. General Alberto Bachelet was jailed
and tortured after a military overthrow of Allende in nineteen
seventy-three. General Bachelet died after six months in prison.
Secret police later put his wife and daughter in torture centers. Once
freed, they fled to Australia and then Germany. Michelle Bachelet returned
to Chile in nineteen seventy-nine. But the government of Augusto Pinochet
refused to let her work as a doctor.
The dictatorship ended in nineteen ninety. In two thousand, President
Richard Lagos made Doctor Bachelet health minister. Two years later, she
became Chile's first woman defense minister.
Today, she promises to be a president "for all women and all men." She
says she will lead a government that will better meet the needs of women
and the poor. And she says she will work to continue Chile's economic
growth and close ties with the United States. President Bachelet will be
sworn in on March eleventh.
In Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was sworn in on Monday. She is
sixty-seven years old. Over the years she has served in the government and
the opposition. She served as finance minister. But she also spent time in
prison and exile for her political activism.
Miz Johnson Sirleaf defeated a former soccer star for president in
November. Now she has the job to begin rebuilding a nation torn by civil
war. Charles Taylor started a rebellion in nineteen eighty-nine. He later
became president. Conflict continued until he resigned in two thousand
three.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf promises a break with the past. She says many
years of problems have hurt progress and national unity, and kept old
disagreements alive. She says her goal is to improve the lives of the
people of Liberia.
Miz Johnson Sirleaf studied economics at Harvard University in the
United States. American first lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice both attended the historic swearing-in.
Liberians call their new president the "Iron Lady" and "Ma Ellen." Miz
Johnson Sirleaf explained both names to a reporter from the New York
Times.
The Iron Lady, she says, "comes from the toughness of many years of
being a professional in a male-dominated world." She says Ma Ellen has to
do with the suffering she has seen in Liberia, and how it "brought out the
motherliness" in her.
IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English was written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm
Steve Ember.
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