At 24, eye-catching Bolivian girl dreams of being female president

She is young, attractive, upper middle class and US-educated.

And until recently, she was close to Bolivian President Evo Morales. But now, Adriana Gil leads a rival party and her career goal is clear: "I want to be my country's first woman president."

Her principal role model, she says, is the late Eva Peron. But she also admires former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, not for her politics but for her no-nonsense leadership style.

To get to the political top, Gil launched her own left-leaning party on May 22, her 24th birthday, less than three weeks after she was abruptly expelled from Morales' Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) for lack of party discipline.

"This is the first time in the history of Bolivia that a woman heads a political party," she told the founding meeting of her Social Democratic Force. "This is the birth of hope. We need to counter the dictatorial tendencies of the present (Morales) government."

Virtually unknown outside Bolivia, Gil is fast becoming a household name in Santa Cruz province, Bolivia's economic powerhouse and a bastion of opposition to Morales, who rode to victory in a presidential election in December on support from the country's indigenous, poverty-stricken majority.

More than half of Bolivia's 9 million people eke out a living on US$2 a day or less.

How Gil came to join MAS, and was expelled from it, highlights some of the difficulties facing a country where the 60 per cent of citizens who belong to indigenous ethnic groups have little in common with the traditional white elite of European descent.

Gil, then a law student at university, joined MAS two years ago because its message of social justice appealed to her. "I was severely criticized by people of my own background," she said in an interview on the day she launched her party. "They called me a traitor, they called me naive, they treated me as if I had AIDS and leprosy at the same time."

Criticism ranged from her taste for designer clothes to having "gringo" friends, the result of having gone to high school in Bay Minette, Alabama, where she lived with an aunt married to the sheriff.

As she gained prominence in MAS and began appearing at campaign events with Morales, the anger of conservatives in Santa Cruz deepened. At one point during the election campaign, she was pelted with eggs as she waited for Morales at the airport.

Morales won 32 per cent of the vote in Santa Cruz, a sound defeat but the best result MAS ever scored in the city and the province of the same name. Many of its citizens, from both ends of the political spectrum, ascribe the relatively good showing to Gil.

Source: China Daily