Tomorrow the people of Chile go to the polls to elect a new president. The frontrunner is a woman, Michelle Bachelet, whose slogan is Estoy Contigo (I am with you). And so are we.

What separates Ms Bachelet from the rest of politicians the world over is not only that she is a woman, and a single mother to boot, but that she survived arrest and torture under Augusto Pinochet, the CIA's stooge put in place after they murdered Socialist Party president, Salvador Allende.

Ms Bachelet has been a lifelong member of the centre-left Socialist Party, which regained power not long after the end of Pinochet's reign. Under their three successive governments Chile has changed from being a pariah among nations to a nation whose prosperity has it on the brink of becoming a developed nation.

In his article for The Age, Victim of torture, mother of a nation, Jonathan Franklin wrote:

… the confidence shown by Ms Bachelet was honed under one of the continent's most brutal governments, the 1973-90 military regime led by Pinochet, which killed up to 3000 Chilean civilians.

In many cases, their bodies were dropped from helicopters into the Pacific Ocean. One of the "disappeared" was Ms Bachelet's then boyfriend, Jamie Lopez, who was tortured for weeks until he revealed the names of guerillas fighting in the resistance.

Ms Bachelet, however, did not crack under torture. She kept her secrets and emerged fortified from the experience. From the moment she was exiled to Australia in 1975, she fought for democracy

So we have more than an affinity for her political position. She was exiled in Australia, where she recuperated from the horrors of the fascist dictatorship of Pinochet, a man with unlimited power to arrest, detain, torture and disappear anyone suspected of sedition.

Ms Bachelet is well ahead in the polls, but her conservative opponents, including one of Chile's wealthiest businessmen, will be looking to the recent election thefts of George W. Bush for inspiration. Expect any outcome therefore, and be surprised if she actually does win.

Buena Suerte, Michelle Bachelet. Australia's struggle is just beginning, but our day too, will come.