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Fmr. Political Prisoner and Torture Survivor Michelle Bachelet
Elected as Chile's First Female President
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf Sworn in as Liberia's New President,
First Elected Female Leader of Africa
Gore Calls For Special Counsel on Eavesdropping, Civil Rights
Groups File Lawsuits Challenging Bush on NSA Wiretaps
Independent Journalist Reports on Ongoing Violence in Haiti,
Upcoming Elections
Fmr. Political Prisoner and Torture Survivor Michelle
Bachelet Elected as Chile's First Female President
In Chile, former political prisoner Michelle Bachelet has
become the country first-ever female president. Running on
the Socialist ticket, Bachelet beat her billionaire rival
in Sunday's election. Bachelet is the daughter of an air force
general who was tortured and died in prison after Augusto
Pinochet seized power in 1973. She too was imprisoned by Pinochet's
regime before fleeing into exile. We speak with Chilean-American
writer Ariel Dorfman, Chilean torture survivor Emilio Banda
as well as Joyce Horman, the widow of a U.S. journalist who
was killed by Pinochet forces.
In Chile, Socialist presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet
was elected to be the country's first female leader in a runoff
election Sunday. Bachelet won 53 percent of the vote beating
out opposition candidate, billionaire Sebastian Pinera. She
spoke to supporters in Santiago on Sunday after the election
results were announced.
- Michelle Bachelet:
"My government will be a government of unity. I will
be the President for all Chileans."
Bachelet is a 54 year-old medical doctor who was imprisoned
and tortured under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
Her father was an air force general who was arrested and
tortured for opposing the 1973 US-backed coup that overthrew
democratically-elected president Salvador Allende. Her father
died of a heart attack in prison. A medical student at the
time, Bachelet was also arrested, along with her mother. They
were blindfolded, beaten and denied food for five days while
their cellmates were raped. They were later forced into five
years in exile, first in Australia, then communist East Germany.
Current President Ricardo Lagos, who was constitutionally
barred from seeking re-election, made her his health minister
six years ago, then in 2002 named her defense minister. She
will be the fourth consecutive president from the center-left
coalition known as the Concertacion that has run Chile since
1990.
An agnostic single mother of three, she was not an obvious
choice for leadership in Chile, a socially conservative Roman
Catholic country.
Bachelet told a news conference on Monday that she would
strive to root out Chile's embedded social divide and pledged
to name a cabinet with an equal number of men and women. On
foreign affairs, she said she would try to improve relations
with neighboring countries and said she supported the proposed
Free Trade Area of the Americas.
In her victory speech Sunday, she promised tolerance saying
"Because I was the victim of hatred, I have dedicated
my life to reverse that hatred and turn it into understanding,
tolerance and -- why not say it -- into love."
- Ariel Dorfman, Chilean-American professor of Literature
and Latin American Studies at Duke University. He is the
author of numerous books, including "Other Septembers,
Many Americas" and "Exorcising Terror, The Incredible
Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet." He was
on the staff of Chilean President Salvador Allende on the
day of the 1973 coup.
- Emilio Banda, a former student union leader from Chile.
In 1986, he was arrested by Pinochet forces and imprisoned
for six months where he was tortured. He left Chile in 1993.
- Joyce Horman, her late husband, Charles Horman, was a
US journalist in Chile during the 1973 coup. He was detained
in Santiago days after Pinochet came to power. His body
was found later, buried in a cement wall. He was 31 years-old.
For years, Joyce Horman fought to uncover the full story
of her husband's death. She sued Gen. Pinochet and other
Chilean officials. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
was listed as a witness. Her story was the subject of the
1982 Academy-Award winning movie "Missing." In
1999, she obtained classified State Department documents
that proved US officials played a role in her husband's
death.
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf Sworn in as Liberia's New President,
First Elected Female Leader of Africa
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has been sworn in as Liberia's new
president, making her Africa's first elected female leader.
In an hour-long speech after the ceremony, she vowed to tackle
a national debt of $3.5 billion, fight rampant corruption
and improve gender equality. We speak with Emira Woods of
the Institute for Policy Studies. She is originally from Liberia.
We turn to Africa where Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has been sworn
in as Liberia's new president, making her Africa's first elected
female leader.
The open-air inauguration was attended by U.S. first lady
Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Liberia
is Africa's oldest republic, founded in 1847 by freed slaves
from America. Two US Navy warships were stationed off Liberia's
coast during the inauguration. At least nine African presidents
including Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo and South Africa's Thabo
Mbeki were among those in attendance. Seated in the front
row was George Weah, the soccer star who lost to Johnson-Sirleaf
and refused to concede the election until last month.
Johnson-Sirleaf is a 67 year-old Harvard-trained economist
who has held positions at Citibank, the United Nations and
the World Bank. She is a veteran politician who was jailed
twice and is nicknamed the Iron Lady.
In an hour-long speech after the ceremony, she vowed to tackle
a national debt of $3.5 billion dollars and to fight rampant
corruption. She added she would stand by a foreign donor-backed
program that will oversee state spending. She also vowed to
improve gender equality in Liberia.
- Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf:
"The administration must endeavour to give Liberian
women prominence in all affairs of our country. We will
empower all Liberian women in all aspects of our national
life. We will support and increase the weight of law...
and deal drastically with crimes that dehumanize. We will
enforce without fear of failure the laws against rape easily
passed by the national assembly. We will encourage all families
to educate all children especially the girls."
Johnson-Sirleaf becomes Liberia's first elected head of state
since the end of a 14-year civil war in 2003. The conflict
uprooted half the country's 3 million people and left up to
250,000 dead. Liberia is still reeling from the war. Its road
network is in ruins, there is no national telephone network,
no national electricity grid and no piped water.
Gore Calls For Special Counsel on Eavesdropping,
Civil Rights Groups File Lawsuits Challenging Bush on NSA
Wiretaps
Former Vice President Al Gore gave a major speech in Washington
Monday accusing President Bush of "repeatedly and persistently"
breaking the law by authorizing the NSA wiretaps. We play
an excerpt of the address and the Center for Constitutional
Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union are filing separate
lawsuits challenging President Bush's order for the NSA to
conduct domestic spy operations without legally-required court
warrants. We speak with a staff attorney for the Center for
Constitutional Rights.
Millions of Americans paid tribute to the Reverend Martin
Luther Kind this weekend on the national holiday commemorating
the civil rights leader. While Martin Luther King Day is an
official federal holiday, the US government tried to break
King many times while he was alive, including arresting him
and him throwing him in prison as well as closely monitoring
him - opening his mail and tapping his phone.
At an address in Washington DC on Monday, former Vice President
Al Gore recalled the FBI's secret surveillance of Martin Luther
King and called for a special prosecutor to investigate whether
President Bush broke the law when he ordered the National
Security Agency to conduct domestic spy operations without
legally required court warrants.
The New York Times reveals today that after the Sept. 11th
attacks the NSA began sending a flood of telephone numbers,
e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists.
This forced the FBI to send out hundreds of agents to check
out thousands of tips every month. According to the Times
virtually all of the tips led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
The NSA had collected most of the intelligence it fed to the
FBU by eavesdropping on Americans making international phone
calls as well as by conducting searches of phone and Internet
traffic.
Meanwhile, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the American
Civil Liberties Union are filing separate lawsuits today challenging
President Bush's order for the NSA to conduct domestic spy
operations without legally required court warrants.
Independent Journalist Reports on Ongoing Violence
in Haiti, Upcoming Elections
We speak with independent journalist Reed Lindsay about
the latest in Haiti, where nearly two years ago the elected
President Jean Bertrand Aristide was overthrown. Haitians
have yet to vote for a new government. In the wake of the
recent death of the commander of the UN force in Haiti, Lindsay
speaks about how UN raids on poor neighborhoods killed and
wounded civilians and the upcoming elections.
The US-installed interim regime has delayed elections four
times. The latest announced date is February 7th.
In a shocking development, the commander of the UN force
in Haiti, Lt. Gen. Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar, was found
dead in his Port-au-Prince hotel room last week with a gunshot
wound to his head. UN officials called his death a suicide.
Bacellar had recently clashed with his superiors and Haitian
business leaders over his opposition to their calls for a
crackdown on the poor neighborhood of Cite Soleil.
Last week, Brazilian Ambassador Paulo Cordeiro de Andrade
Pinto announced investigators were probing other possibilities
before confirming Lt. Bacellar's death was a suicide. Chilean
Gen. Eduardo Aldunate Herman has been named interim head of
the UN force. Gen. Herman was one of 11 former high-ranking
Chilean military officials under former dictator Augusto Pinochet
who trained at the US-run School of Americas. Herman's appointment
has stoked fears the UN will step up its raids on poor neighborhoods
like Bel Air and Cite Soleil. These raids have already killed
scores of innocent people. Many Haitians allege the raids
are part of a campaign against Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party.
Lavalas demonstrations are routinely targeted, and most of
their leaders are in jail or exile.
One of them is the Reverend Gerard Jean Juste. He was jailed
in July for a murder that occurred while he was out of the
country. Government officials subsequently prevented his bid
to run for President, claiming he could not run from jail.
He remains in prison despite an international outcry and the
recent diagnosis he is suffering from leukemia. Meanwhile,
another Lavalas leader, the folk singer So Ann Auguste, has
been in prison since May 2004. Last week, Amnesty International
declared her a political prisoner and called for her release.
- Reed Lindsay, an independent international reporter who
has written for many publications, including the Observer
of London, the Boston Globe and Newsday.
- Website: ReedLindsay.com
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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