Fems Rule: two women take charge of their nations

Four pieces on the new female presidents of Liberia in Africa and Chile in Latin America. When will the US follow suit?

1. First female president in Africa elected -- by allafrica.com

MONROVIA - Liberia, Africa’s oldest independent republic, made history Nov. 23 as it did a number of times in the past. From its daredevil declaration of independence on July 26, 1847, in spite of imperialists growling, to fielding the first female president for the UN General Assembly, to overwhelmingly electing a warlord in 1997, Liberia has been the nerve center of African innovation.

On Nov. 23, Liberia marked another red-day with the affirmation of the overwhelming election of a woman head of state -- the first ever in Africa.

The world is excited about this coup, which is only marched by the German Bundestag’s inauguration of its first female chancellor, and many across the Continent are looking up to the adaptation of the Liberian coup.

But this process, though unanimously declared free, fair and transparent by more than 4,000 election observers representing hundreds of credible local and international institutions and governments, is not without its share of protests akin to elections in Africa. The question is, “Will this affirmation stand out as the dawn of a new era in Liberia following more than a decade of bitterness?”

Just as the German Bundestag was swearing in the first female ever-elected chancellor, Angela Merkel, 51, on Nov. 23, Liberians were gearing up for the affirmation of Africa’s first female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, 66. Though a political coincidence of the rarest breed, the two incidents represent the dawn of a new era for women in politics and for governance across the globe, political commentators said.

Angela Merkel, a conservative member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and former communist, took over from Gerhard Schroeder of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in a coalition that comprises CDU, SPD, and CSU or Christian Social Union.

“Dear Mrs. Merkel, you are the first democratically elected female head of government in Germany,”parliament president Norbert Lammert said. “That is a strong signal for women and certainly for some men, too. I wish you strength, God’s blessing and also some enjoyment in your high office.”

The Germans may not be walking towards democracy with some 15,000 UN peacekeepers separating them from deep distrust and war, but they have as much stronger a reason to opt for a traditional male chancellor as most Liberians felt from the onset of the electoral process. But they, too, realized that politics know no gender where tougher decisions for national good are required.

Back in Africa, another female several oceans away seems to have similar burdens when she takes office in January next year.

Madam Sirleaf will have to lay the foundation stone for a new Liberia, beginning with the resuscitation of the Liberian economy, which has been assailed by years of war, corruption, neglect and mismanagement. She has an even tougher job: She will have to erase the deep-seated suspicion of governance in this country before moving on to patch the economy, win international confidence, and reconcile the people who are divided along several lines including economic, security and tribal.

And outside Africa, she will be convincing the donor community that Liberia is now a country to do business with, while seeking to convince the United Nations that the sanction regimes imposed on Liberia during the Taylor era no longer hold water.

“I am humbled by the awesome challenge, but I think it represents a victory for women. A woman is finally breaking the barriers and entering this club, this male bastion. I think that Liberian women and African women will all be better off,”she says.

When ECOWAS and AU heads of state and government sit in their grandeur to decide the fate of Africa, Liberia will be represented by a female. She has six years after which she pledged to step down for “the young people to take over.”

Whatever the magnitude of the burden that faces Madam Sirleaf, the fact remains that she is out to make history, which will forever change the political chemistry of Liberia, and perhaps all of Africa.

One thing that is clear, according to analysts, is a new political era has dawned and those protesting its advent may have to back down in grace, while there is still time.


2. Liberia's Harvard-Trained 'Queen' Is Sworn in as Leader – by LYDIA POLGREEN

MONROVIA, Liberia , Jan. 16 - Greeted by shouts of "Queen of Africa!" and standing before the bullet-scarred capitol of this war-torn nation, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard-trained banker and stalwart survivor of Liberia's brutal politics, took the presidential oath of office on Monday, becoming Africa's first woman to be elected a head of state.

As her words were interrupted again and again with joyful shouts of "Yes!" and "Amen!" Ms. Johnson Sirleaf, 67, told the crowd that she would bring "a fundamental break with the past, thereby requiring we take bold and decisive steps to address the problems that for decades have stunted our progress, undermined national unity and kept old and new cleavages in ferment."

It was a jubilant moment suffused with history, observed with smiles by members of the old boy's club Ms. Johnson Sirleaf now joins, the formerly all-male fraternity of African leaders. Olusegun Obasanjo , Nigeria's president and chairman of the African Union, looked on beaming as Ms. Johnson Sirleaf was sworn in.

A United States delegation led by Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat beneath simple woven canopies. Their presence was an indication of the long and often troubled relationship between the United States and Liberia, which was founded by freed slaves from the United States in 1847.

In the front row sat George Weah, the soccer star who lost to Ms. Johnson Sirleaf and initially refused to concede the election, raising the grim possibility that long-suffering Liberia's opportunity for lasting peace might slip away. But Mr. Weah conceded last month, paving the way for the historic ceremony.

Despite the euphoria, Ms. Johnson Sirleaf faces a mountain of troubles in a nation afflicted by civil war for 14 years. Liberia's public works are in shambles; there is no piped water, no electricity grid. Its roads, schools and health centers, where they still exist, barely function.

An interim government that has ruled since Charles Taylor fled in 2003 was supposed to kick-start development, but corruption forced many donors to halt their programs.

The European Union had been supporting an effort to bring electricity to all of the capital, but withdrew because of corruption concerns. With the new president taking office, the Europeans will begin the program again, committing $70 million. The United States is committed to rebuilding the armed forces. The United Nations mission in Liberia, which includes 15,000 peacekeepers, costs about $700 million a year.

There also remains the difficult question of what to do about Mr. Taylor, the warlord-turned-president who, with the backing of Libya and other regional powers, rampaged through his own country and much of West Africa, unleashing a cycle of war that still reverberates today. He fled to exile in Nigeria in 2003 as a condition of ending the war, but is under indictment by a court for war crimes in Sierra Leone. Nigeria has said it will hand him over only if Liberia asks.

Ms. Johnson Sirleaf said Liberia was bound by the United Nations resolution calling for Mr. Taylor to appear in Sierra Leone, and must weigh calls for justice against the need for peace. "Our peace is fragile; we still have lots of Taylor operatives in the country," she said in an interview. "We don't want to see us return to a state of war."

Liberians, even Mr. Weah's partisans, who had taken to the streets to protest what they said was a rigged election, exulted in the moment, relieved that war seemed to have ceased and proud that their nation had produced the continent's first woman to be elected head of state.

"I voted for George Weah, but I accept Ellen because she is our Ma and is going take care of us," said Benedict Newon, 19, a former child soldier. He first hoisted a weapon for the warlord Charles Taylor when he was 10, though he later switched allegiance to another rebel group.

"I never carry gun again," Mr. Newon said, gesturing at his 8-month-old son and his pregnant wife, Fatou. "I have a future now. I got to protect it. I got to be patient with Ma Ellen."

That notion of president as mater familias may seem new, but in Liberia politics has always been paternalistic - fighters for Mr. Taylor called him their "Papay."

In an interview before the inauguration, Ms. Johnson Sirleaf said that unlike some Western women in politics, she embraced the stereotypical feminine roles as part of her appeal, though she is also known as Liberia's iron lady from her years in opposition politics, which included two stints in prison.

"The iron lady, of course that comes from the toughness of many years of being a professional in a male-dominated world," she said. "But also the many young people we have here, and the suffering I have seen, and the despair and lack of hope, brought out the motherliness in me, and that is where the Ma Ellen comes from."

It is a combination - tough and tender - that has won women new respect in the increasingly democratic political scene in Africa. Once dominated by male autocrats, many African countries now have women in high positions, and a handful are poised to join Ms. Johnson Sirleaf at the pinnacle of power.

Women from across the continent flocked to Monrovia to celebrate her victory. Abena P. A. Busia, an English professor from Ghana, said she would have swum to the inauguration.

Euphoria was palpable in the streets, where squads of workers frantically readied this battered city for its long-awaited close-up. Lacking heavy equipment, crews painted lines in the roads using huge stencils and hand brushes.

Pandora Matati, 20, a former fighter, was among the crews who worked furiously to prepare for the big event.

"I love Ellen because she is going to do so much for us," she said as she took a brief break from her job laying concrete at the capitol. "With Ellen, anything is possible."


3. Chile Elects First Female President: Bachelet, a Former Political Prisoner, Will Keep Socialists in Power -- by Monte Reel

SANTIAGO, Chile, Jan. 15 -- Socialist Party candidate Michelle Bachelet, a political prisoner during Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship and a single mother of three, was elected president on Sunday, the first woman to lead a country long considered one of the most culturally traditional in Latin America.

With 97 percent of voting sites reporting, Bachelet had won 53 percent of the vote to about 47 percent for billionaire businessman Sebastian PiÒera.

Thousands of supporters filled the streets around Bachelet's election night headquarters here to celebrate, waving banners and chanting her name.

"I never thought I would see this happen," said Margarita Flores, 35, a supporter who held a bag of confetti. "Finally, a woman."

Bachelet's victory will keep the Socialist Party in the presidential palace for four more years, following the presidency of Ricardo Lagos. When Lagos won the 2000 election, it was the first time a Socialist had held the seat in Chile since 1973, when Pinochet overthrew the government of Salvador Allende. What followed was a 17-year dictatorship, marked by widespread human rights violations, that would fundamentally shape the personal and political life of Bachelet.

She is the daughter of a Chilean air force general who served under Allende and who was imprisoned and tortured after the coup. He died in prison. Two years later, government forces detained Bachelet and her mother, putting them in prison, where they were tortured. She eventually went into exile in Australia and Europe, returning to Chile in 1979 to work as a pediatrician. Under Lagos, she became health minister in 2000 and defense minister in 2002.

"You know that I have not had an easy life, but who has had an easy life?" Bachelet told supporters Sunday night during a victory speech in downtown Santiago. "Violence entered my life, destroying what I loved. Because I was a victim of hate, I have dedicated my life to turn that hate into understanding, into tolerance and, why not say it, into love."

"It is a historic triumph," Lagos said in a televised speech Sunday evening. "We are a new Chile, and having a woman as president shows that."

With Bachelet's election, Chilean voters continued a region-wide trend toward the political left in national elections. The most recent presidential elections in Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia have brought liberal or socialist candidates to power, creating two distinct groupings of leaders in South America. In countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia, the prevailing political discourse questions the benefits of free-trade agreements and encourages more independence from U.S. government and business interests. Bachelet, however, is expected by analysts to fall into the second grouping, represented by fiscally conservative presidents who aim to direct government spending toward social programs.

The Lagos government was close to the United States on trade matters and was the first South American government to sign a bilateral trade pact with the United States. While serving on the U.N. Security Council before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, however, Chile cast a crucial vote against U.N. authorization for the war.

Bachelet inherits from Lagos a thriving economy, which has benefited from soaring copper prices. Modernization was a cornerstone of the Lagos government; Santiago's subway system has doubled its length, for example. But many Chileans, moved by the soft, motherly image that Bachelet at times projected during her campaign, hope she will spread the wealth to more of those in need.

"Many here think Chile doesn't have a soul and has very little sensitivity for its people," said Raul Sohr, a political analyst in Santiago. "There's been a lot of growth in recent years, but the distribution of income is still appalling. A lot of people are hoping that she'll put a little heart into the very technocratic changes that previous administrations have made."

Bachelet has promised to reform Chile's private pension system, which was singled out by President Bush as a possible model for privatizing the U.S. Social Security system. But the system is often criticized in Chile for failing to adequately protect the poor.

Bachelet also promised child care for low-income mothers and has pledged to fill at least half of her cabinet posts with women.

Sunday's runoff election was called when no candidate won a majority in a first round of voting in December, when Bachelet won 46 percent of the vote and PiÒera 26 percent.

Piera, 56, one of Chile's wealthiest citizens, owns parts of the country's largest airline, bank, shipping company and industrial group. Representing a coalition of conservative parties, he reached out to centrists who have consistently voted into power a coalition of liberal parties in every election since Pinochet left office.

In the waning days of the campaign, Piera emphasized his Christian faith -- an implicit counterpoint to Bachelet, who publicly describes herself as agnostic. Chile is predominantly Catholic, and it legalized divorce for the first time in late 2004.

Bachelet has joked to reporters that as a woman, separated, agnostic and Socialist, she appears to some to represent "all of the sins together." But the combination did not seem to turn off voters, many of whom said they were attracted to her compassion and the promise of change she represented. At one point during the campaign, she took a short break to vacation with her daughter, and she has emphasized that she seeks to balance her roles as a political figure and mother.

"People are expecting changes with Bachelet," said Marta Lagos, a Santiago-based pollster with Mori Chile. "They're not expecting political changes as much as cultural ones -- less discrimination and more openness."

The ranks of working women in Chile have doubled since 1990, but the figure stands at only 36 percent -- the lowest rate in Latin America. Women also earn 30 to 40 percent less than their male counterparts, according to the Chilean government agency that deals with women's issues.

Some Chilean women said they were hopeful that Bachelet can change this. When asked whether she believed discrimination against women was a problem in Chile, Daniela Soltelo, 22, turned off the espresso machine in the pastry shop where she works and lowered her eyebrows suspiciously.

"Of course it is," Soltelo said. "But I think that's about to change."


4. Female, Agnostic and the Next Presidente? Heavy Favorite in Chilean Vote Cuts Against Grain

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Everyone in the audience was dressed in dark blue or black. Some wore clerical collars, and most had heavy silver crosses dangling around their necks. But Michelle Bachelet wore an electric pink jacket that sent a clear message: She was a candidate for president, not sainthood.

"I'm agnostic. . . . I believe in the state," Bachelet told several groups of evangelical ministers last week. "I believe the state has an important role in guaranteeing the diversity of men and women in Chile -- their different spiritualities, philosophies and ways of life."

Bachelet, 54, a socialist running in national elections Sunday, has a strong chance of becoming Chile's first female head of state -- and thus the first woman in South America to be elected to the top national office without replacing a deceased or disabled husband.

As a single mother, Bachelet is a symbol of change in a country so culturally conservative that it legalized divorce only last year. As both the child of a military family and a victim of prison and torture under the former military dictatorship, she is also a symbol of healing in a country long divided by ideology, class and competing versions of a tumultuous recent history.

Running against two conservative male candidates, Bachelet has maintained a commanding lead in the polls, even while openly airing personal details that she believes represent Chile's shifting cultural landscape.

Although a substantial number of Chileans remain opposed to divorce, most voters don't seem bothered by the fact that Bachelet readily acknowledges she split up with her husband and bore two children while unmarried. Although the Catholic Church has long been the country's dominant cultural institution, her avowed lack of interest in religion has not hurt her, either. And even though just 36 percent of Chilean women hold jobs -- the lowest percentage in Latin America -- Bachelet has won support with her promise to choose women for at least half of her cabinet posts.

"My candidacy represents a society that is more progressive and modern, that recognizes both men and women do have talents," said Bachelet, who most recently served as defense minister for President Ricardo Lagos. "People want politicians who are more concerned about citizens, who do things more ethically, and in that sense there is an expectation that women could be different in their way of doing politics."

In a poll released Thursday, Bachelet led the field of candidates with 41 percent support. Sebastian Pinera, a former senator who is one of Chile's wealthiest men, was projected to finish second with 22 percent. Joaquin Lavin, a conservative former mayor of Santiago, received 19 percent support, according to the poll, conducted by the Center for Contemporary Reality Studies here.

If none of the candidates receives 50 percent of votes cast on Sunday, a second and decisive round of voting between the top two finishers will be held Jan. 15. Polls project that Bachelet would win handily in a head-to-head matchup against either of her opponents.

Despite their divergent political histories and views, all three candidates have emphasized the same core goals: battling unemployment, improving the social security system, narrowing the divide between rich and poor and improving public health services. Gender hasn't been an overt campaign theme for anyone, but it is a powerful undercurrent that can be felt everywhere on the campaign trail.

Bachelet's campaign ads and promotional materials carry an understated but unmistakable message of reaching out to those usually excluded from Chile's political life. Her slogan is "I'm With You," and the promotional materials that outline her platform include a variety of photographed faces, every one of them a woman's or a child's.

"She's already doing things in a different way, and people have criticized her harshly for it," said Marta Lagos, a Santiago-based pollster and political analyst, who is not related to the current president. "She has a daughter, and in September they took a few days off and went to the beach in the middle of the campaign. It's unthinkable for any politician to say, 'I'm with my family, and this is my time -- no one else's.' But that's what she has said."

Bachelet's direct political experience is limited to the past five years. She served as health minister from 2000 to 2002 before Lagos named her defense minister. She enjoys the full support of her popular former boss, who cannot seek reelection because of term limits and is leaving office with an approval rating of about 70 percent. From a policy standpoint, Bachelet is closely aligned with Lagos, and her candidacy is widely viewed as a continuation of his administration, which has emphasized the use of free-trade initiatives to finance expanded social programs.

But there is another source of her appeal, one that is rarely mentioned but seems significant in a society that experienced extreme political upheaval and military repression from the 1970s to the 1990s. The trauma split the society into bitter factions, and it remained deeply divided for years after the return of democracy in 1990. Bachelet's history falls on both sides of that divide. Her father, Alberto, was an air force general who served under President Salvador Allende, a socialist. He was thrown into prison after the 1973 military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, along with thousands of other Allende supporters, and died in military custody.

Bachelet, a medical student at the time of the coup, was kidnapped by government security agents two years later, along with her mother. While detained, both women were blindfolded, beaten and tortured. They later fled into exile in Australia and East Germany. In 1979, Bachelet returned to Chile and worked as a pediatrician.

Today Pinochet, 90, is under house arrest in suburban Santiago, indicted on corruption and human rights abuse charges. The specter of his 17-year dictatorship played a prominent role in the three previous presidential elections since the restoration of civilian rule, but it has rarely been mentioned in this campaign.

Despite her own family's suffering under Pinochet, Bachelet has not used it to gain voter sympathy. Although she has become a leading voice for women's rights, she prefers not to speak about what she and her mother endured in prison except to say generally that they were "physically mistreated."

The poetic justice of Bachelet's likely victory at the polls, in fact, is pointed out far more often by international observers than by Chileans themselves.

"Pinochet's shadow at this point is not even strong enough to be called a shadow," said Andres Velasco, a professor of international finance at Harvard University who has taken a sabbatical to assist Bachelet's campaign. "It's annoying to read so much about Pinochet in the foreign press, because the dictatorship is not even an issue here anymore."

One sign of how much the country has changed since the days when men in uniform dominated political discourse, Bachelet's advisers said, can be seen in the list of candidates for Chile's congressional elections, also slated for Sunday.

"More than 25 percent of our candidates running in these elections are women," said Ricardo Nuez, president of Chile's ruling Socialist Party. "During the last round of elections, that number was 15 percent. Following Bachelet, I am sure the number will just keep rising."

If elected, Bachelet would be the first female president in most of Latin America to be elected strictly on her own merits. Isabel Peron took over as Argentina's president in 1974 when her husband Juan died. Violeta Chamorro was elected president of Nicaragua in 1990, but she was largely known as the widow of Pedro Chamorro, an assassinated newspaper publisher. In Panama, the widow of President Arnulfo Arias became president in 1999. In Guyana, voters in 1997 elected the widow of longtime President Cheddi Jagan. Bolivia, Haiti and Ecuador have all appointed women briefly as caretaker presidents.

A Bachelet presidency might not be unique for long, however. If the polls in Peru are borne out, a former congresswoman, Lourdes Flores Nano, may win its presidency next year. In that case, the neighboring countries, long embroiled in border and maritime disputes, might have a chance to solve them woman-to-woman.