By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Feb 11 2005 (IPS)

With two women – Socialist Michelle Bachelet and Social Democrat Soledad Alvear – as the leading contenders for the presidential nomination by the ruling centre-left coalition, the opposition is hoping to boost its popularity by "feminising" its own campaign.

Since January, Joaquín Lavín, presidential candidate for the right-wing Alliance for Chile, has been making regular appearances accompanied by lawmaker Lily Pérez and the mayor of the southern Chilean city of Concepción, Jacqueline van Rysselberghe, two of the Alliance’s most popular female figures.

"I want them to help me tell Chilean women about our plans and our dreams for them, because women are at the heart of the Chile I want," said Lavín, whose coalition comprises the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) and National Renewal (RN) parties.

According to his detractors, however, Lavín’s sudden inclusion of Pérez and van Rysselberghe on the campaign trail is merely a ploy aimed at counteracting the growing popularity of former defence and health minister Bachelet and former foreign minister Alvear, who are both vying for nomination by the ruling Concertación por la Democracia coalition.

Lavín, who is lagging behind in the polls, has been accused of "trivialising" the campaign by using women in a blatant attempt to score points.

Things heated up when van Rysselberghe, a member of the UDI like Lavín, said that "being intelligent doesn’t necessarily mean being fat and ugly," adding that "you only have to look at us to realise that the two of us together (she and Pérez) don’t make up the weight of just one of them (Alvear and Bachelet)."

Alvear, a 54-year-old lawyer, accused van Rysselberghe of discrimination, and used the incident to pledge her commitment to fighting these kinds of attitudes. She added that both she and Bachelet would be participating in debates in every region of the country to air their views and ideas, because "this is not a Miss Concertación contest."

Pérez, a member of the RN, tried to downplay the controversy, and said that the most important thing is not the gender of the candidates, but rather the question of "who will best respond to the needs of the population."

"The Concertación has been in power for 16 years, and it still hasn’t managed to give us women what we need. This is not just about a change of gender, but a change of government," she said.

Virginia Guzmán, the deputy director of the Chilean Centre for Women’s Studies, told IPS that in order to determine whether Pérez and van Rysselberghe are simply being used for electoral purposes, "you would first have to hear what they’re proposing."

"Being a woman doesn’t necessarily mean that you actively support women’s equality, or the inclusion of traditionally marginalised groups in political decision-making circles," she noted.

Tatiana Hernández, a researcher with the Domos Centre for Women’s Development, told IPS that the "feminisation" of Chilean politics is not limited to this particular presidential race, but is a more generalised phenomenon, despite the fact that the country remains extremely conservative and "machista".

In her opinion, this change reflects growing disillusionment with traditional politics, which have always been dominated by men.

Studies and surveys show that "women are not seen as traditional politicians. Female politicians are viewed as possessing certain culturally acquired skills and abilities that allow them to successfully carry out the tasks they take on," she added.

For her part, union leader and former parliamentary deputy María Rozas of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores trade union federation believes that Bachelet and Alvear enjoy significant support because the public has realised that women can perform well in any sphere.

"They have both been highly effective in the work they have done, and not only with regard to gender issues," she remarked to IPS.

Rozas’ attitude towards the women pushed into the spotlight by the Alliance for Chile was far less complimentary. "The recent emergence of Lily Pérez and Jacqueline van Rysselberghe demonstrates the ‘machismo’ of the Chilean right and the cowardice of Lavín, who is afraid of competing against a woman. What’s more, neither of these women has contributed anything to the national debate," she said.

According to the latest polls, either of the governing left-wing coalition’s female presidential contenders could handily defeat Lavín in the elections to be held in December.

The current frontrunner is Bachelet, whose father Alberto Bachelet was an Air Force general who worked for the government of Socialist President Salvador Allende (1970-1973) and died in prison during the early years of the Pinochet dictatorship.

Democratically elected Allende was ousted in a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled Chile until 1990, when the Concertación por la Democracia first took power.

In April, the parties that make up the Concertación – which include the Party for Democracy and Radical Party, along with the Socialist and Social Democratic Parties – will define the procedure to be used to select their presidential candidate.

In a poll conducted by Ipsos Chile in January, when respondents were asked to predict who would win in a presidential race between Bachelet and Lavín, 62.7 percent chose Bachelet, while only 30.7 percent picked Lavín, an economist, former mayor of Santiago, and member of the conservative Catholic organisation Opus Dei.

If the contest were between Alvear and Lavín, 51.9 percent believed that Alvear would win, compared to 35.3 percent for Lavín.

According to Guzmán, Alvear and Bachelet are particularly popular with young Chileans, who hope the women will usher in a new way of doing politics, more in tune with the younger generations’ needs.

"I want a state that provides quality services, that is close to the people, that supports them in their endeavours, that protects them from abuses and respects their rights. A state that is an ally of the people," declared Bachelet, a surgeon by profession, upon launching her campaign slogan, "More for Chile."

Nadia Soto, a 24-year-old university student, does not believe that the leading role played by women in this election campaign represents a genuine cultural change in Chile.

Soto was especially critical of the inclusion of Pérez and van Rysselberghe in Lavín’s campaign. "It seemed to me like an act of desperation. They were just trying to copy a formula that has obviously had good results. When they saw the success of the women in the Concertación, they tried to come up with a couple of their own, playing on the belief that a woman can do something new," she told IPS.

Seamstress Nelly Lizama, 57, told IPS she was happy to see women more actively involved in politics, but added that she wouldn’t vote for either of the female contenders in December, because she doesn’t believe they are experienced enough, and is afraid that if they are elected, they could be manipulated by the parties that back them.

"I have greater faith in men when it comes to being president of the country. Maybe in a few years, when women have more experience, when they’ve been inside politics longer, I’ll vote for one of them to lead Chile," she said.

The female vote is being energetically pursued by all parties, since there are more women than men on the country’s voter lists.

Traditionally, women in Chile have voted preferentially for right-wing candidates. In the last presidential election, in 1999, a total of 1,939,034 women backed Lavín, compared with 1,837,064 for Ricardo Lagos, the current president. These gender-specific statistics are available because women and men cast their ballots at separate tables in Chile.

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