corrente

Uh oh! This will send the little sawed off scrubs at the Heritage Foundation and the "Chicago School" scampering for a change of underpants:

Chile electing first woman president - early results
Sun Jan 15, 2006 4:46 PM ET
Chileans vote for new president
By Fiona Ortiz

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - Michelle Bachelet was on her way to becoming Chile's first woman president on Sunday, taking more than half of the vote with two-thirds of polling stations counted.

Bachelet, the socialist candidate for Chile's ruling center-left coalition, had 53.22 percent of the votes, based on a tally of 67 percent of polling stations, the government Electoral Service said.

[...]

Bachelet, imprisoned and tortured during the 1973-1990 Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, will be the fourth consecutive president from the center-left coalition that formed in the 1980s to oppose Pinochet. It has run the copper-producing country of 16 million people since Pinochet stepped down in 1990.

Supporters began celebrating at Bachelet's downtown election headquarters immediately after the official results were read out live on television.

A Bachelet victory would consolidate a shift to the left in Latin America, where leftists now run Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela, some with politics more extreme than others. A socialist will soon take office in Bolivia and a leftist is favored to win Mexico's presidential election in July. Reuters

UPDATE:

Chile's Bachelet Becomes Nation's First Woman Leader
Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Michelle Bachelet won election in Chile, becoming the nation's first woman president after pledging to help students, workers and retirees benefit from the copper- rich country's economic growth.

Bachelet, a former defense minister who leads the coalition that ousted Augusto Pinochet from power in 1990, garnered 53 percent of the vote with more than half of ballots counted, the government said. Opposition candidate Sebastian Pinera, who won 47 percent of ballots in today's run-off, conceded the election.

The next president will take power with the highest credit rating in Latin America, a seventh year of economic expansion under way and a record budget surplus because of a surge in prices for copper, Chile's top export. Bachelet, the second woman ever elected president in South America, said she will use that revenue to help almost 3 million poor in a country where workers earn an average of $522 a month. Bloomberg

Holy Condor Condi! Grease the Fear & Smear Media Machine! Launch the drone planes! Mine the harbors! Unleash the death squads Herr Rumsfeld! Everyone to the bunker! Mumbling Dick will be soliciting assasination plots and serving hot coup d'etats at the stroke of midnight! “We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly... (in) weeks rather than months.” Viva Pinochet! Viva "creative destruction"!

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