Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
利比里亚总统埃伦·约翰逊•瑟利夫
From Liberian cabinet minister to senior UN administrator and now presidential election winner at the second attempt, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's career has never stood still。
Having served as a finance minister in William Tolbert's True Whig government in the 1970s, Johnson-Sirleaf announced her intention to stand as senatorial candidate in the 1985 elections in opposition to the military rule of Samuel Doe。
For a brave speech heavily critical of Doe, she was sentenced to ten years imprisonment, of which she served two short periods of detention, one before and one after the 1985 election, before fleeing the country。
Doe went on to win the election through widespread intimidation and almost certainly fraudulent counting。
Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet
智利总统巴舍莱
Chile elected socialist Michelle Bachelet to be its first woman president on Sunday, making her only the second woman elected to head a South American state as Latin America cements a shift to the left。
A former defense minister, Bachelet is only the second woman elected to head a South American nation after Janet Jagan of Guyana was chosen to succeed her husband as president in 1997 after he died。
A Bachelet victory consolidates a shift to the left in Latin America, where leftists now run Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela, some with politics more extreme than others。
Socialist Evo Morales will soon take office in gas-rich Bolivia, and a leftist is favored to win Mexico's July presidential election。