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Once apon a time...

"..Facing growing food shortages, the government of Salvador Allende placed Michelle Bachelet's father in charge of the Food Distribution Office. When Augusto Pinochet came to power in the September 11, 1973 coup, General Bachelet, refusing exile, was detained at the Air War Academy, under charges of treason. Following months of daily torture at Santiago's Public Prison, on March 12, 1974, he suffered a cardiac arrest that resulted in his death. On January 10, 1975, Bachelet and her mother were detained, and tortured, at Villa Grimaldi, a notorious secret detention center in Santiago. Some days later they were transferred to Cuatro Álamos ("Four Poplars") detention center, where they were held until the end of January. Later in 1975, due to sympathetic connections in the military, both were exiled to Australia, where Bachelet's older brother Alberto had moved in 1969."

"In May 1975, Bachelet left Australia and moved to East Germany, to an apartment assigned by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) government in Am Stern, Potsdam; her mother joined her a month later."

"In October 1976 she began working at a communal clinic in the Babelsberg neighborhood, as a preparation step to continue her medical studies at an East German university. During this period she met architect Jorge Dávalos, another Chilean exile, whom she married in 1977. In January 1978 she went to Leipzig to learn German at the Karl Marx University's Herder Institute (now the University of Leipzig)."

"She returned to Potsdam in September 1978, to continue her medical studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin for two years. Only five months after enrolling as a student, however, she obtained authorization to return to her country."

"Michelle Bachelet - a self-described agnostic - won the 2006 Chilean leadership election in a runoff, beating center-right millionaire businessman and former senator Sebastián Piñera, with 53.5% of the vote. A moderate Socialist, she campaigned on a platform of continuing Chile's free market policies, while increasing social benefits to help reduce the country's gap between rich and poor, one of the largest in the world. Her term was inaugurated on March 11, 2006."

The General must really enjoy the irony of that story.

Bachelet is smart enough to know that if she tries anything like what Allende did (with her father's collusion), she won't last for even one term in office. She is therefore behaving herself (so far), proceding with extreme caution and adopting only modest socialist positions -- such as expansion of the national health care system and opposition to tax cuts. She and her socialist party favored Hugo Chavez for appointment to the UN Security Council but wisely backed off when it became clear that this did not sit well with Chileans. Her speeches are laden with all the usual leftist buzz words -- "diversity," "reparations" and the like. Has she ever expressed regret about Allende's attempt to impose soviet style communism on Chile? Nope.

I doubt General Pinochet is in any way amused by her ascension to power.