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Angela Merkel remains a mystery after all these years at the top
Some call her a wily operator, others a misguided bureaucrat – will Germany ever really know its chancellor?
Kate Connolly in Berlin
{sidebar id=11 align=right}It was, Angela Merkel reflects, the most galling mistake of her childhood. Not a lie or a betrayal, some malicious gossip or a fistfight but the moment in which the young girl from East Germany crawled into the resinous hollow of a tree wearing a new tracksuit sent to her from the West.
The anecdote speaks volumes about a dutiful, conscientious, slightly awkward woman who, though pre-eminent in Germany for seven years, is still a relative enigma to her compatriots. It was a response to an array of questions put to her by Süddeutsche magazine as part of a broader inquiry: "Who is this person who is governing our country?"
The answer: a woman who regrets not being able to go shopping without being recognised; who would most like to have supper with Vicente del Bosque, the manager of the Spanish football team; who powers down through hiking, cooking or laughing and whose biggest fear is, no, not the collapse of the euro, but getting caught unprotected in a thunderstorm.
{sidebar id=10 align=right}A man who knows Merkel better than most and admits to being referred to as her "little pet" is David McAllister, 41, an up-and-coming member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and prime minister of Lower Saxony who has been tipped as a future chancellor (and also happens to be half Scottish). He puts her success down to her commonality. "There's no ballyhoo with her," he says. "She's very direct and down to earth. What Germans love is they see her on Friday in Brussels with Hollande, Obama, Cameron, whoever, and then they see in their newspaper the next day how directly after that she went shopping for her supper in the supermarket. The photograph of that wasn't fixed. Everyone knows that that's the way she is."
He also credits her with modernising the CDU, a party whose members – typically Catholic, male, western, family-oriented – she has led as a Lutheran, eastern, childless woman. "I think there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who now vote for the CDU who wouldn't have done before her," McAllister added. He said that while well aware that Germans tend to vote for a party rather than a personality, the CDU is desperately trying to persuade people "if you want Angela Merkel you've got to vote for the CDU," in recognition of how strong the Merkel factor is.
Others are less charitable. The academic and former adviser to Helmut Kohl Gertrud Höhler, describes her as furtive, dangerous and a threat to Europe in her new book, The Godmother: How Angela Merkel Is Reshaping Germany, in which she coins the phrase "System M" to describe Merkel's modus operandi. "For years, the press has concentrated on the question as to whether she governs well, or badly, or perhaps not at all," said Höhler. "In reality, Merkel has developed an autocratic system," she said, and has "already installed an autocratic regime".
She accuses Merkel of ruining the euro and undermining the political careers of many leading men in the CDU. She even mentions her in the same breath as German dictators of the last century and goes so far as to suggest her strict Lutheran pastor father's decision to bring her up in the authoritarian confines of the communist East, where Merkel moved with her family when she was just weeks old, was an extension of his deep desire to control her. But Höhler's book cuts against the grain of popular opinion, which still strongly favours Merkel. According to the latest poll her popularity rating is 61%, making her Germany's most popular politician.
Wolfgang Nowak, director of Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society and a former adviser to the SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder said the reason many people, including Höhler, were suspicious of Merkel was precisely because she kept so much to herself. "The reason there's a System M is because it's the first time in German politics that a chancellor's office sticks so tightly together so that nothing is leaked. Merkel talks to just a very small, tight, trusted circle and those who are not in that circle are often envious or offended," he said.
"There's also the theory," said Constanze Stelzenmüller of the German Marshall Fund "that Merkel is the kind of person that decides the more you say and the more you write, the more these things can be held against you and the less said the better, the more done the better. I'd guess her motto was: 'Let's get more done' and that strikes me as entirely sensible. Particularly in a media age, that's a sign of strength."
Nowak added it is indeed true, as Hohler writes, that many men who once held big positions in the party are now gone, "but not because Merkel killed them off, rather, they were simply unmasked for what they were – CDU career politicians, puppets or fraudsters".
Gunnar Beck, a reader in law from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, is rather more sceptical, saying that Merkel is only held in such high regard because those around her don't make the grade. He is critical of her diplomatic skills, as well as her judgment of character. "By comparison to a rather unfortunate line of politicians who have been exposed for irregularities of various kinds, (including the former president and former defence minister) she appears to be the paragon of virtue and that's noticed by the electorate, albeit in the context of a low general standard. She's entirely above criticism in her personal life and work ethic, but you've got to put it into perspective. While she's a very good domestic political operator she is helpless abroad and she's also a spectacularly bad judge of character," he says, citing her promotion of many who have since fallen (including the president, defence minister and Nicolas Sarkozy) and others who have not, including the European Central Bank's president, Mario Draghi, and Jorg Asmussen, an executive board member of the ECB. Beck is also wary of the idea that Merkel has a sophisticated plan. "She is a superbly shrewd party and domestic politician but has been repeatedly outmanoeuvred by Draghi, Monti, Hollande and others. There is no sign that she has a masterplan regarding the euro."
Among those critical of Merkel's lack of vision is Hans Kundnani, a Germany analyst and editorial director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. "What's needed now is someone who can talk up the benefits of the single currency, of Germany's role in the euro narrative, including the fact that it bears responsibility for this flawed currency, rather than saying: 'we're the victims of it,'" he said. "She's not particularly visionary or bold."
Gerd Languth, a political analyst and Merkel biographer, said this was precisely what Germans liked about her. "She is extremely pragmatic, and non-ideological, like most Germans are." She had, he said, been strengthened by the knowledge that despite criticism from outside Germany over her euro policies, the support for her within was stronger than ever. "She notices that the more she's attacked from outside, the more the solidarity towards her within Germany grows," he said. "Germans don't know what she wants, but the trust in her is unshakeable, and if the ship cants, she's the one they want to be at the helm."
While there is at this stage, a year before a general election, quite a degree of expectation that Merkel will be re-elected, much is still at stake, not least, if the German economy takes a dive or the euro plunges into more misery, which could see the tide of popular opinion turning against her. Despite the growing disgruntlement towards her among Christian Democrats, Languth said he found it hard "to imagine a CDU governing without Merkel if they're standing high in the polls".
What he is sure about though is that if Merkel were not re-elected "she'd disappear from politics altogether". Asked what he thought she would do, he said that unlike her predecessor and close friend of Putin, Gerhard Schröder, "she would not go to work for Gazprom".
The final paragraph of this article was changed on Thursday, September 20 to read "close friend" of Putin rather than "close fiend". The error was introduced during the editing process
Source: The Guardian UK
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Ghana President John Atta Mills
It was third time lucky for John Atta Mills as he became President of Ghana after two failed attempts.
The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) might have been forgiven if its faith in him had wavered after he lost twice - against President John Kufuor in 2000 and 2004.
But the NDC was eventually vindicated after overwhelmingly nominating Mr Atta Mills again, ahead of three other contenders, as the party flag-bearer in the presidential elections at the end of 2008.
{sidebar id=10 align=right}He narrowly lost the first round vote in December against the then-governing New Patriotic Party's (NPP) candidate Nana Akufo-Addo, who did not pass the 50% threshold needed for outright victory.
In the run-off election later that month Mr Atta Mills came out ahead of his rival by a wafer-thin margin.
But in a poll dogged by cries of foul play from both sides, it took a ballot re-run in the remote rural constituency of Tain before the opposition candidate was finally declared winner of the keys to Golden Jubilee House.
Mr Atta Mills served as vice-president to Jerry Rawlings between 1997 and January 2001 and had previously created a stir by saying that if elected, he would consult with the former president.
But in 2008 he distanced himself from Mr Rawlings, even drawing criticism from his former boss for being too gentle with the NPP.
In contrast to the advertising billboards of his rival NPP candidate, Mr Atta Mills began his campaign with modest-sized signboards bearing the slogan "I Believe in Ghana".
He described himself as a social democrat who leaned broadly on independence leader Kwame Nkrumah's idea of social welfare.
But he pitched a more inclusive and less polarising political platform than both Mr Nkrumah and Mr Rawlings.
Born on 21 July 1944 at Tarkwa in western Ghana, "The Prof", as Mr Atta Mills is known, has pursued a long academic career.
He graduated in law at the University of Ghana in 1967 before pursuing his legal studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Mr Atta Mills then won a Fulbright scholarship at Stanford Law School in the US.
He later returned to his alma mater the University of Ghana, where he taught for nearly 25 years.
Mr Atta Mills was national tax commissioner under Mr Rawlings before being promoted to the vice-presidency.
He is a keen hockey player, at one time a member of the national team, and also enjoys swimming.
He is married to Ernestina Naadu Mills, a director of education and trained marriage counsellor.
The former second lady-turned-first lady is also a dog-lover who has kept cross-bred Alsatians. The couple have one son, Sam Kofi Atta Mills.
Source: BBC, 3 January 2009
Queen Elizabeth II
Athough born a princess, Queen Elizabeth was not originally in direct line to the throne. Had Edward VIII not abdicated in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson in 1936, his younger brother George Elizabeth's father would not have been crowned King, thus making the young princess heir presumptive.
The first child of the Duke and Duchess Of York, Elizabeth was born on April 21, 1926, and christened Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor in the chapel at Buckingham Palace. Educated at home with her younger sister Princess Margaret, she later went on to serve during World War II as a subaltern in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, where she reached the rank of Junior Commander.
In 1947, she married a handsome young naval officer, Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, a distant cousin she met when she was just 13 and the son of Prince Andrew of Greece and a great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria. Their first child, Prince Charles, was born in 1948 and his sister Princess Anne came along two years later.
When her father's illness forced him to abandon a proposed visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1952, the Princess, accompanied by Prince Philip, undertook the journey in his place. On February 6, while in Kenya on the first stage of her trip, she received the news of King George VI's death and her own accession to the throne.
The coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on June 2, 1953, and was broadcast on radio around the world and - at the young Queen's request - on television, bringing the splendour of the event to hundreds of thousands of people in a way never before thought possible. When the Queen's youngest sons, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward, were born in 1960 and 1964 respectively, they were the first children to be born to a reigning monarch since Queen Victoria.
The Queen has experienced the marriage break-ups of three of her four offspring, and the demise of Charles and Andrew's relationships, combined with a major fire at Windsor Castle, led her to describe 1992 as an annus horribilis in her Christmas speech for that year. Recent years may have been turbulent ones for the royal family, but there is no doubt that its titular head has helped uphold the traditional image of the monarchy while contributing significantly to the creation of a modern role for it.
The British monarch maintains close contact with the prime minister, with whom she has a weekly audience when she is in London, and acts as host to visiting heads of state. In the course of her reign she has visited nearly every county in the realm, and as her 80th birthday celebrations in 2006 proved, the energetic monarch shows no sign of slowing down.
Source:hellomagazine.com/profiles/queen-elizabeth-ii
Profile: Queen Elizabeth
As the Public Record Office releases more documents concerning the abdication of King Edward VIII, BBC News Online looks at the life of Queen Elizabeth - later to become Queen Mother - in her role as Queen Consort.
By Bob Chaundy, BBC News Profiles Unit
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon twice rejected proposals of marriage from King George V's second son Bertie because she was frightened of the restrictions that being a member of the Royal Family would place on her life.
Eventually, though, she was persuaded to accept.
But had she any inkling that she would end up as the Queen Consort, she may not have been talked into marrying. Had she not, the nature of the monarchy might have been very different.
For when Elizabeth and Bertie tied the knot in 1923, neither had any reason to believe they would become King and Queen.
She was the first "commoner" to enter the Royal Family since Henry VIII's last wife.
But she wasn't exactly common. Her father was fined for failing to register her birth in time. He'd been out shooting grouse.
He was the Earl of Strathmore, an hereditary peer whose family seat was at Glamis Castle in Scotland.
The family turned Glamis into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers during World War I and the young Elizabeth would help nurse them.
Her own brother, Fergus, died at the Battle of Loos.
With the war over, Elizabeth threw herself into London's social scene.
She loved partying and gained a reputation as a good dancer. Her bonhomie and gregariousness never left her; neither did some of the values of the Edwardian age in which she was steeped.
Bombshell
Once married, the Duke and Duchess of York, as they became, led relatively sedentary lives with their two young daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, until the abdication turned everything upside down.
When her brother-in-law David, now the uncrowned Edward VIII, was deliberating between Mrs Simpson and the throne, Elizabeth personally pleaded with him to put the nation before love.
She was concerned that her husband was not temperamentally suited to be King.
Bertie was notoriously shy and diffident, and had a pronounced stammer.
When Edward chose Mrs Simpson, Bertie broke down and "sobbed like a child".
Elizabeth berated Edward for his "shameful dereliction of duty".
She never forgave Edward and Mrs Simpson who became the Duke and Duchess of Windsor after the abdication.
In her view, Edward had let the monarchy down. Her sense of duty, imbued in her from an early age, was offended.
Feud
Elizabeth, who was deeply religious, was also offended by the thought of Edward marrying a divorcee.
She regarded Mrs Simpson as a sleazy social climber whom she famously referred to in a letter as "the lowest of the low".
Elizabeth maintained a life-long feud with the Duchess of Windsor, engineering a wholesale clear-out of her friends from Court and ensuring that the duchess was denied the title of Her Royal Highness.
At the heart of her animosity was her firm belief that Wallis's behaviour had placed an intolerable strain upon her husband, contributing to his early death at 56.
Even at the Duke of Windsor's funeral in 1972, Elizabeth remained stony-faced, though the two did exchange words briefly. After the Coronation, Elizabeth took steps for her husband to attend a speech therapist to help cure his stammer, a radical move at the time.
With her able support, he rose to the occasion. The standing of the monarchy, dented badly by the upheavals of the abdication, was restored during World War II.
Dignity
By refusing to leave the country, and by repeatedly visiting the bombed out areas of London and elsewhere during the Blitz, the royal couple were a huge boost to morale.
Widowed at 51, Elizabeth continued to carry out public duties in support of her daughter, the current Queen, for another half a century.
She took pleasure in going out and meeting the people, and gave the monarchy a family image that still holds today.
She was also a great traditionalist who held back plans to modernise the monarchy.
But, for many people, she embodied the great British virtues of family and dignity, laced with the odd eccentricity and an endearing sense of humour.
Source: BBC, 29 January 2003
The bitter family feud that haunts the £29m Manchester City target
Inside Thomas and Rose Barwuah’s third-floor council flat above a row of shops in Bagnolo Mella, on the outskirts of Brescia in northern Italy, photographs of their family adorn the walls.
There are pictures of their four children — Abigail, 22, Mario, 19, Enoch, 17, and Angel, 11. But it is Mario who takes centre stage. There are photos of him as a baby and then a toddler growing up in the Sicilian city of Palermo, kicking a football, in a suit at a family party and play-fighting with brother Enoch as Rose looks on.
{sidebar id=11 align=right}But Mario is no longer a Barwuah. He has taken the surname of his adopted family, Balotelli. The toddler has grown up into an Inter Milan striker and Champions League winner valued at around £29million.
The player they call ‘Super Mario’ claims his natural parents abandoned him when he was two years old. The grainy images in the Barwuahs’ humble flat in Bagnolo Mella, a sleepy town of terracotta buildings, haphazard cobbled streets and a population of just 13,000, are therefore the only connection they have with their eldest son.
Mr Barwuah picks up a picture of a three-year-old Mario holding a football. It was taken at a friend’s home in Vicenza, a 90-minute drive from Bagnolo Mella.
{sidebar id=12 align=right}‘Mario had spent hours playing football in the rain,’ said Mr Barwuah. ‘When the boys came in they were soaked but they were laughing and joking despite being wet. My friend said to Mario, “You really are Super Mario”. It’s the name we gave him.’
Mr Barwuah — a ‘poor metal worker’, as he puts it — is a proud man. But the strain on his face is obvious when he says Balotelli has only invited him to one Inter match in four years, the 2-1 Champions League win over Chelsea in February. Even then it was a second-hand invitation and a match in which Balotelli only played the last 32 minutes.
‘He turned up one day with four tickets and he gave them to his brother, Enoch,’ said Mr Barwuah. ‘I asked if I could come and watch and he said that Enoch had the tickets and he could do what he wanted with them.
‘He has never remembered us. Not a birthday or Christmas, nothing. He is not the same boy I knew when he was younger — always laughing and smiling. He was trouble but in a good way.’
Trouble, it seems, has followed Mario Balotelli throughout his turbulent 19-year life.
Born to Ghanaian immigrants Rose and Thomas on August 12, 1990, in Palermo, the future athlete was in and out of hospital as a baby. Mr Barwuah was forced to find work away from home and shuttled back and forth every weekend on a 12-hour overnight train. Mrs Barwuah was left at home with two young children — Abigail and Mario. Life was hard, to say the least.
Mr Barwuah said: ‘There were complications with Mario’s intestines and he was in a bad way. The doctors were worried that he would not survive and we even had him baptised in hospital in case he died.
‘For a year we were frantic with worry that he would not live. He was our first-born son and we were so proud when he was born, but we were left facing the prospect he might die.’
Mario’s condition improved by the spring of 1992 and the family moved to Brescia, a wealthy industrial city with a rich vein of factories and industries looking for workers.
At first they lived in a cramped studio flat with another African family before asking social services for help, pointing out Mario had recently recovered from an operation.
Social workers suggested Mario should be fostered. They proposed Francesco and Silvio Balotelli, who already had two sons and a daughter of their own.
The Balotellis, a white Italian family, lived in a large house in Concesio, an affluent town six miles north of Brescia. They could offer two-year-old Mario a lifestyle of which Mr Barwuah and his wife could only dream.
Mr Barwuah said: ‘At first we were not sure but we decided it was probably best for Mario. We saw him every week and we all got on really well.
‘We thought that at some point, once things had sorted out, Mario would come back to us. But instead, every time we tried to get him back, the Balotellis kept extending the foster time.’
Mr Barwuah said the family initially agreed to a one-year foster placement, which was then extended by a further 12 months. But their eldest son gradually slipped further and further away from them.
‘We couldn’t afford lawyers to fight for us, so Mario grew more and more distant,’ he said.
‘He would come and visit and play with his brothers and sisters but he just didn’t seem to have any time for us, his mother and father.
‘We wanted him back for more than 10 years but, every time we tried, the courts blocked it and as the years passed he became colder towards us. The Balotellis know people and are influential and we could do nothing.’
Balotelli was never officially adopted but made a conscious decision to turn his back on his Ghanaian heritage. He took the surname of his adopted parents and represented Italy’s Under 21 side.
Perhaps it was the teenager’s way of surviving in the racially charged cauldron of northern Italy, where he was regarded as an outsider.
As his foster mother has said: ‘He was born and raised in Italy but had to suffer the humiliation and hardships of being considered a foreigner.’
In 2008, on his 18th birthday, Balotelli gained Italian citizenship and an Italian identification card — at a ceremony at Concesio’s city hall to which the Barwuahs were not invited.
‘We didn’t know anything about that until we saw it on the news,’ said Mr Barwuah. ‘I didn’t even know he had taken the surname Balotelli. I thought he would still have our surname.’
It was also in 2008 that Balotelli claimed during a television interview that his birth parents had abandoned him in a hospital. The footballer had by then found fame at Inter Milan and claimed the Barwuahs were only interested in him for his money.
‘If I didn’t become Mario Balotelli then Mr and Mrs Barwuah would not have cared about me for anything,’ he said.
The accusation is deeply painful for Balotelli’s biological father, but Mr Barwuah’s patience is running out. His response is passionate and exasperated. He knows there is little chance of change now.
Mr Barwuah said: ‘Mario was convinced we had abandoned him in a hospital but that’s just not true. That is the Balotelli family putting something into his head and it really hurts.
‘We have always loved Mario but he has changed. It’s the Balotellis — they have made him turn against us.
‘How can he say we just want to know him for his money? It’s not true. We don’t want any money. We are Christians.
‘Do you know what he has started saying now? That we beat him as a child. It’s a lie. We never touched him. We would never beat him. We gave him all the love we could.
‘We have done nothing wrong. We want more than anything to have our son back but now I think it’s too late.’Mr Barwuah said he saw Mario last month and the striker told him he would be moving to Manchester. But there will be no family visits to England this season.
Mr Barwuah turns to those family snaps again, much-loved pictures that have been perused thousands of times.
‘Like any father, I wish him well. I was so proud when he joined Inter and I am still proud of him,’ he said.
‘I don’t want anything from him. I just want us to be how we were.
‘We did not leave Mario. Why would we have these pictures of us together?’
The boy born with a ball at his feet
HIS team pose in V-necked yellow football shirts on an Astroturf pitch. A proud supporter behind the camera captures the moment for the family album.
Some of the boys are smiling, or casually draping their arms around their team-mates. But it is the boy with the ball at his feet who draws the eye.
Mario Balotelli’s is the only black face in shot, yet something else sets the future Inter Milan striker apart from his peers. Attitude. The young footballer scowls into the lens, resting an elbow nonchalantly on his knee.
He is a player who has always stood out — in demeanour and ability — both at nine and 19.
Walter Salvioni spotted Balotelli when he was 15 in the junior ranks of third division Italian side AC Lumezzane. Within minutes, the coach was convinced the teenager had the talent to make his senior squad.
The 47-year-old said: ‘I was watching the juniors train and saw Mario on the pitch — after just five minutes I knew I had to have him in the first squad. He was incredible. His touch was fantastic.
‘I went to the junior coach and said, “I’m taking that lad for the first team”. I didn’t know he was only 15 until the coach said, “You can’t, he’s too young”.’
The club’s chairman and the league decided Balotelli could play if Lumezzane got a doctor’s certificate to say he was fit. ‘Within 24 hours he was with us,’ said Salvioni.
‘He spent a day training with the first team and then he was on the coach with us for the match in Genoa.
‘They were up near the top and we were third from bottom, but we ended up winning 1-0. Mario came on for the last 30 minutes and won the corner from which we scored the winner.’
That was in 2005. Balotelli soon outgrew the club, earning an ultimately unsuccessful trial with Barcelona before joining Inter Milan in 2006.
Salvioni said: ‘Mario is an all-round talented player. He can beat his opponents for pace and skill and he is very physical. The few months he was with me, I was very impressed with him.’
But the prodigiously talented youngster could sometimes irritate Salvioni. ‘He was always rushing away after training and wouldn’t stay for any tactics,’ said the coach.
‘I confronted him. He smiled and said, “I have to go home to study”. In the end, he confessed he was going to play five-a-side with his friends.’
But the boy Salvioni knew was not the trouble-maker who is talked about today. He was arrogant, but just wanted to play football.
‘He was always very polite,’ said Salvioni. ‘When he isn’t picked he gets angry because he knows he is good enough to play. I think that’s what has made him go to Manchester City. He told me a few times he got on really well with (Roberto) Mancini, and he will play him.
‘What Mario really wants is to be picked for the Italian national team. That is his dream.’
Laura Williamson and Nick Pisa in Brescia
Source: Dailymail/UK
Augusto Pinochet Ugarte
Augusto Pinochet Ugarte (born 1915) led the military movement of 1973 that toppled the elected Chilean government. An army general, he proceeded to govern in an authoritarian manner while attempting to rebuild the economy and permanently alter Chile's political system.
Augusto Pinochet Ugarte was born in the Chilean port city of Valparaiso on November 15, 1915. From his early years he aspired to a military career. Because of his small stature Pinochet was rejected twice by the National Military Academy before he matriculated at the Escuela Militar's four year officer training course in Santiago. He graduated in 1936 and was promoted to second lieutenant in 1938. He married Maria Lucia Hiriart and had three daughters and two sons.
During his early professional career Pinochet distinguished himself as a specialist in military geography and geopolitics. His 1968 book Geopolitica (Geopolitics) went through several editions. He also stood out as a student in the Infantry School, in the War Academy (staff school), and in other advanced courses. He held several staff and command posts during these years, posts which provided him with numerous contacts with other officers in the army, air force, navy, and carabineros (national police). Pinochet served on the Chilean military mission in Washington, D.C. in 1956. He taught at the Military School, at the War Academy, and at Ecuador's national war college in the 1950s and 1960s. It was during these early military years that he developed the ideals that guided his military career: patriotism, public service and respect for authority.
{sidebar id=10 align=right}Early in his career, Pinochet was not interested in the political debates that dominated civilian society. A cousin said "his ideological orientation was an enigma. If he had any, he had not demonstrated publicly." By 1970, the year Salvador Allende Gossens was elected to the presidency, Pinochet had been promoted to division general—the highest rank in the Chilean army. In 1971 he became commandant of the Santiago garrison, one of the most sensitive and influential army assignments owing to the size of the garrison and to its location in the capital city. By this time Pinochet was firmly convinced that political demagoguery and Marxism were disruptive, hypocritical, and incompatible with, in his words, "the moral principles that should uphold society. … ." He traced his hostility to Marxism to events of the late 1930s, when Marxists participated vociferously in government, and to the Cold War years when the Chilean Communist Party was briefly outlawed. He also became skeptical of the ability of Chile's democratic system to withstand Marxism.
The 1970 presidential election confirmed his deep suspicions, for it gave power to the Marxist Allende despite the fact that he was a minority candidate. As garrison commandant Pinochet was an eyewitness to the social, economic, and political turbulence accompanying the Allende administration's efforts to turn Chile toward socialism through the control of national institutions. Outwardly he seemed to remain loyal to the legitimately elected government. When the army commander-in-chief, General Carlos Prats Gonzalez, became interior minister during a serious trucking strike of late 1972, Pinochet became acting commander-in-chief. He held this position again on the eve of the September 11, 1973 putsch.
On that day the armed forces seized power. Allende was killed in the presidential palace. Pinochet claimed that Allende committed suicide. That was refuted by Allende's widow and others who claim that Allende was murdered by Pinochet's troops. Pinochet became president of the Junta of Government, a body composed of military commanders-in-chief. A year later he became president of the Republic of Chile. His term of office was formally extended later through the adoption of a constitution giving him an eight-year term (1981-1989). Allende's loyalists tried to maintain resistance, but it proved costly. Over 1500 lives were lost by the end of the day. Fearful of internal resistance, the junta declared itself in a state of internal war. The U.S. CIA was instrumental in providing the junta with The White Book, a manual for executing a successful coup and caused hundreds to be beaten and tortured by the army and police.
From late 1973 until late 1976 the country was in an economic depression, the aftermath of Allende's policies and the economic pressures that had been applied by both foreigners and Chileans between 1970 and 1973. This was also a period of harsh authoritarian rule. Inflation was gradually reduced in the mid-1970s, and by 1978 Chileans, especially those of the middle and upper sectors, were talking of an "economic miracle" based on free enterprise, foreign loans, and "denationalization" of the economy. Pinochet's popularity peaked in 1978 when a plebiscite confirmed his leadership and policies—although a growing opposition denied the validity of the vote. In the early 1980s Chile suffered from the world recession, and the government resorted to stricter controls of the press, the exile of some dissidents, curfews, and repression characteristic of the early years of Pinochet's rule. At the same time he oversaw a shift in economic policy that revived the role of the state, which he and his supporters had blamed for Chile's misfortunes prior to 1973.
The supporters of Pinochet liked his role as Chile's strongman, the one figure capable of controlling the armed forces and the symbol of anti-Marxism. But he also became the figure toward whom a growing opposition (church leaders, labor, politicians, human rights advocates, leftists) directed its energies. The United States and other foreign governments were cautious in relations with his government. Through this period he maintained his resolute anti-Communism and showed an uncanny ability to survive politically in a country marked by unsolved economic and social problems. Pinochet was able to do this because of his own abilities, but also because of the strength of discipline in the military, the inability of opposition leaders to agree on policy, and the fear of many Chileans that alternatives would be worse than his authoritarianism.
These factors became subjects for increasing debate within the government, throughout Chile, and in the world press in 1983 when opposition leaders organized mass demonstrations against the regime's economic, political, and social programs. Beginning in May of that year miners, students, workers, and dissident political leaders took to the streets to register their discontent. Pinochet used armed force to quell the demonstrations, then began talks aimed at political compromise. When talks stalled he again used strong-arm tactics, claiming as usual that politicians and Marxists were to blame for Chile's problems.
In 1986 Pinochet survived an attempted assassination with only minor injuries. But the international outcry against his alleged violations of human rights continued to grow louder. The new constitution that had been seven years in the making was ratified by plebiscite in 1980. Even though it was approved, the election was declared a fraud. The constitution called for Pinochet to serve another eight years. This time actually permitted the opposition party to mount a successful campaign to remove him from office. The U.S. Congress financed $2 million worth of media consultants, poll judges and a parallel vote count to ensure a somewhat fair election. On October 5, 1989, 55% of the Chilean people voted to remove Pinochet from office. He was able to retain power until free elections installed a new president, Patricio Alwyn on March 5, 1990. Although he abdicated his title as president, Pinochet remained on as commander in chief of the army. After stepping down as president, Pinochet devoted himself to modernizing and computerizing his beloved army. Even at 80, he still saw himself as a force within Chilean society, very much in charge of the armed forces until his constitutionally forced retirement in March 1998.
Further Reading
Pinochet's own version of his role in government can be found in his The Crucial Day (1982). Frederick M. Nunn's The Military in Chilean History (1976) provides information on the military and political background to Pinochet's rise to power. Critical of the military and Pinochet, and sympathetic to his predecessor, are Robinson Rojas Sandford, The Murder of Allende and the End of the Chilean Way to Socialism (1975), and Ian Roxborough, Phil O'Brien, and Jackie Roddick, Chile: The State and Revolution (1977). Robert Moss' Chile's Marxist Experiment (1973) is favorable to Pinochet. Pinochet: the Politics of Power 1988 and A Nation of Enemies: Chile under Pinochet assess the situation since the coup.
"Augusto Pinochet Ugarte." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Retrieved May 23, 2012 from Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography | 2004 | Copyright