The unexpected travails of the woman who would be president

“SHE'S lovely,” enthused a middle-aged woman as Michelle Bachelet, the presidential candidate of Chile's centre-left Concertación coalition, toured a street market in a lower-middle-class area of Santiago. Kissing babies, embracing a distressed young mother and joking with stall-holders, Ms Bachelet, a paediatrician, struck exactly the right note. She has long seemed to be cruising towards winning a fourth consecutive term for the Concertación, which has governed Chile with much success since the end of the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in 1990. She has much going for her. The economy is growing strongly. Ricardo Lagos, the outgoing president, is popular. The conservative opposition is divided.

As a woman in a socially conservative country, Ms Bachelet represents change as well as continuity. She would be only the third woman to be elected president in Latin America—and the first who was not the widow of a public figure. She has argued that her sex is an electoral advantage: Chileans “don't only want a society that is successful but also one that protects; a woman can achieve progress on both fronts,” she says. Polls showed that most voters were happy to choose a woman.