MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bachelet denounces Pinochet's economic model

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet condemned General Pinochet's military regime and the lack of social welfare consciousness in rightwing politics.

In a seminar entitled "Social Protection in an Uncertain World," Bachelet delivered an academic argument against the economic model of the Pinochet regime and defended the reconstruction process carried out by the ruling Concertación coalition.

She explained that, in contrast to European countries that maintained a capitalist, laissez faire economic system alongside the creation of the welfare state "we in Chile implemented a similar model from the standpoint of the right, a neo-liberal model, imposed and subsidized."

"But in the nineties we started setting right the most urgent issues" such as "ensuring basic liberties, maintaining a macroeconomic balance so that the new democracy could survive, and fight the enormous amount of poverty that was passed down from the military regime", said the Chilean president.

Bachelet announced she was determined to leave her mark on Chile's social system and that her legacy would be to redirect the role of the state towards greater social responsibility. The president declared her government would aim for "even economic growth, and have a preoccupation with increasing personal liberties and the well-being of its population."

Since 1990, poverty in Chile has fallen by 40 percent. Spending on health has tripled while spending on education has doubled. Three of every four Chileans live in their own house. "The main focus is the idea of an integrated system," said Socialist Party Sen. Carlos Ominami. "It is based not only the rights of groups, but on the rights of individuals that are guaranteed by the state. This will be our legacy."

Later on, Bachelet met with Joan Turner, widow of the singer-songwriter Víctor Jarra, who was killed following the military coup. Together they inaugurated a tribute dedicated to Jarra on display in the Plaza de la Cultura, opposite the La Moneda Presidential Palace. The exhibition is installed where one of the symbols of the military regime, the "flame to liberty" (Llama de la Libertad), once stood.

That same day, Bachelet, along with her mother, Angela Jeria, celebrated the publication of a book of letters by her father, "The Letters of General Bachelet" (Las cartas del general Bachelet).

The book contains letters from her father smuggled out from jail during his imprisonment after the coup. A clearly emotional President Bachelet recalled how difficult it was for her family to receive the letters and said that her father "symbolized democratic Chile."

By Beatrice Karol Burks The Santiago Times