Wednesday 9 October 2013

Chile: Elections

This week's edition of "Time" has a piece on the Chilean presidential elections called "Chile's Haunted Vote". It's only available online to subscribers, but here are a couple of quotes from the candidates, Michelle Bachelet and Evelyn Matthei.

Bachelet: I have been evolving too. I mean, there was a time in my life when I had so much pain, so much rage. But that pain transformed into a constructive force, to say, O.K., the pain is because I lost not only my father, but my country's democracy. [The challenge is] to enable a democratic way of doing things so that nobody has to go through this again... so that we can be political adversaries, but never again enemies.

Matthei: Of course very bad things happened to my country, both before the coup, after the coup, during the coup. People died. People suffered. On the other hand, you cannot judge what happened in Chile if you do not judge what happened all over the world. It was a horrid time for humanity.... I have never, ever said that I was not aware, and when I had the opportunity to talk about it, I did openly.

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