Who is Michelle Bachelet?

Bachelet had secured her socialist credentials by moving on to East Germany where she secured also the first of her three marriages.

by Gamini Seneviratne

Despite the claims/confessions of Australia and the GDR (refugee) and the USA (trainee war criminal) she’s a citizen, primarily, of Chile, which by the way, has a population of which two-thirds are Roman Catholics – roughly the same as that of Buddhists in Sri Lanka.

She is a woman of many accomplishments and to acquire them she has, over time, secured the help and support of forces that at first sight one would consider were mortal enemies. Her story includes passages such as those in the fictions spun by Tamil asylum-seekers.

It would not be unkind, given Bachelet’s status as a champion of ‘human rights’ who has also chosen to wield the weaponry employed by the Vatican in its ‘Inquisition’ in the – er – multi-enlightened Europe some centuries ago, to note that the standards of proof demanded by Bachelet are as variable as those that had been applied to and by her throughout her career as a politician in Chile.

Or as non-existent as those of Darusman’s ‘Commission” – in whatever sense one chooses to construe that word.

Bachelet’s father had been a middle-level functionary (above that of, say, a superintendent of the stores maintained by our Food Commissioners in the bad old days) when Allende came to power via an open election. He had died a year later, supposedly in custody and supposedly as a result of brutal assaults by Pinochet’s forces.

Such treatment must surely have been of the same order as the brutality of the personnel of our armed forces towards innocent Tamils who perpetrated murder and mayhem on civilians here. Bachelet has claimed that “She was yelled at using abusive language, shaken,” and both she and her mother were “threatened with the killing of the other”.

That was Bachelet’s version of what Pinochet, one of the more monstrous criminals of the last century, had done to supporters of President Allende who was executed by the USA, the prime seekers / saviours of Democracy.

Pinochet – surprise! – had allowed Bachelet’s brother to emigrate to Australia and within a year enabled the sister and the mother to obtain ‘asylum’ there.

Bachelet had secured her socialist credentials by moving on to East Germany where she secured also the first of her three marriages.

Her second ‘marriage’ was to a left-winger who was accused of trying to assassinate Pinochet. In running for President then, Bachelet declared that she did not share that lover’s political views.

Her next husband was an unabashed fascist supporter of Pinochet. She has had not the least hint of a squirm for going for training in the USA to the headquarters for field training for all the war criminals in south America, the OAS, by the master war criminal of ‘modern’ times: the USA.  

That’s quite a nice C.V. for someone bent on punishing a Buddhist nation that overcame terrorists who were, and continue to be, well-funded by ‘Christian’ groups that have come to sport much egg-in-the-face following the semi-official ‘Presidential’ actions of Donald Trump. As Cardinal Pell put it a couple of months ago, “Trump is a barbarian, but he is our barbarian”.   

Let us see how the cookie crumbles with Joe Biden – he at least has educated women who are also aware of the sorry state of the world we live in, as clearly Michelle Bachelet is not, by his side: Jill Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez and many others are.