[ARCHIVO] President Bachelet in Swedish Parliament: “We’re establishing a firmer base for development with equality and justice”
During an official visit to Sweden, the President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, gave a speech in Parliament entitled “The challenges of welfare policy from the Chilean perspective”.
“We’re establishing a firmer base for development with equality and justice”, President Bachelet said.
She explained that “In our history, there is a common bond with the social and political construction that Sweden has followed”. She added that “recently, we have sought to enter into broad political agreements to manage our economy and fulfil our public policies in order to build institutions that ensure the wellbeing of the population in a sustainable and equitable way”.
Along those lines, the President said that Chile is facing new horizons as a consequence of the social and cultural progress it has experienced. “These challenges are precisely at the center of the government program we have put into action in the last two years. Our objective is to build a model of social inclusiveness, with continuing and sustainable economic growth and a dynamic and participatory democracy. All of these pillars will contribute to transforming Chile into a developed country”.
The President stressed that “education is at the heart of our changes. We are leading reforms to strengthen public education and the professional development of educators”.
Moreover, she said, “we have adopted a tax reform with a dual objective: to finance this new way of thinking about education and to make our tax system more equitable”.
She added, “we have promoted labor reforms that will increase collective bargaining and strengthen the trade unions. We’ve also approved a new electoral system to improve competition and representative democracy, leaving behind the discriminatory rules inherited from the dictatorship”. She continued, “we have made substantial changes in the way that political parties and financing mechanisms function as a way to address our deficiencies in terms of transparency and probity”. And she emphasized, “as a general framework for this process, we have initiated debate on development of a constitution born in democracy, which will be legitimate and up-to-date, with the greatest amount of citizen participation possible”.
The President continued, “the changes implemented are aimed at creating the foundations of what has come to be known as the social rule of law, which will progressively strengthen the pillars of education, health care, and pensions. We do this, in fact, aware of our situation as a middle-income country, which also faces the challenge of undertaking a production transformation that will enable us to move beyond exporting commodities, adding value through innovation in order to deal with fluctuations in economic cycles with a greater capacity for recovery”.
In her speech, President Bachelet also expressed gratitude, “on behalf of my country and my fellow Chileans, for the hospitality and solidarity shown by the Swedish people to Chileans who were persecuted for trying to make Chile a more equitable country. Thousands of Chileans suffered, in the words of Olof Palme, ‘brazen violence, aimed at stopping the efforts of Salvador Allende'”.