Fmr. Political Prisoner Michelle Bachelet Elected Chile's First Female President

In Chile, Socialist presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet was elected to be the country's first female leader in a runoff election Sunday. Bachelet won 53 percent of the vote beating out opposition candidate, billionaire Sebastian Pinera. She spoke to supporters in Santiago on Sunday after the election results were announced.

* Michelle Bachelet:
"My government will be a government of unity. I will be the President for all Chileans."

Bachelet is a 54 year-old medical doctor who was imprisoned and tortured under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Her father was an air force general who was arrested and tortured for opposing the 1973 US-backed coup that overthrew democratically-elected president Salvador Allende. Her father died of a heart attack in prison. A medical student at the time, Bachelet was also arrested, along with her mother. They were blindfolded, beaten and denied food for five days while their cellmates were raped. They were later forced into five years in exile, first in Australia, then communist East Germany.

Current President Ricardo Lagos, who was constitutionally barred from seeking re-election, made her his health minister six years ago, then in 2002 named her defense minister. She will be the fourth consecutive president from the center-left coalition known as the Concertacion that has run Chile since 1990.

An agnostic single mother of three, she was not an obvious choice for leadership in Chile, a socially conservative Roman Catholic country.

Bachelet told a news conference on Monday that she would strive to root out Chile's embedded social divide and pledged to name a cabinet with an equal number of men and women. On foreign affairs, she said she would try to improve relations with neighboring countries and said she supported the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.

In her victory speech Sunday, she promised tolerance saying "Because I was the victim of hatred, I have dedicated my life to reverse that hatred and turn it into understanding, tolerance and -- why not say it -- into love."

* Ariel Dorfman, Chilean-American professor of Literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University. He is the author of numerous books, including "Other Septembers, Many Americas" and "Exorcising Terror, The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet." He was on the staff of Chilean President Salvador Allende on the day of the 1973 coup.
* Emilio Banda, a former student union leader from Chile. In 1986, he was arrested by Pinochet forces and imprisoned for six months where he was tortured. He left Chile in 1993.
* Joyce Horman, her late husband, Charles Horman, was a US journalist in Chile during the 1973 coup. He was detained in Santiago days after Pinochet came to power. His body was found later, buried in a cement wall. He was 31 years-old. For years, Joyce Horman fought to uncover the full story of her husband's death. She sued Gen. Pinochet and other Chilean officials. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was listed as a witness. Her story was the subject of the 1982 Academy-Award winning movie "Missing." In 1999, she obtained classified State Department documents that proved US officials played a role in her husband's death.

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