Headlines

ELECTIONS-URUGUAY: All Set for Drastic Shift to the Left

Darío Montero

MONTEVIDEO, Oct 30 2004 (IPS) - Uruguay’s leftist Broad Front coalition is set to win Sunday’s presidential elections for the first time ever, with at least 50 percent of the vote according to the latest opinion polls.

Uruguay’s leftist Broad Front coalition is set to win Sunday’s presidential elections for the first time ever, with at least 50 percent of the vote, according to the latest opinion polls.

That would enable leftist candidate Tabare Vázquez to avoid a Nov. 28 run-off against his closest rival, Jorge Larrañaga of the centrist National Party.

The Encuentro Progresista/Frente Amplio/Nueva Mayoría (Broad Front) alliance’s closing campaign rally in the capital last Wednesday was the biggest political party gathering in Uruguayan history, with estimates putting the number of people between 300,000 and 500,000.

The most recent surveys, published Thursday by the country’s five polling companies, predict that Vázquez, a socialist, will take between 50 and 56 percent of the vote Sunday, compared to between 27 and 32 percent for Larrañaga.

If the projections play out on Sunday, the impact of the left’s historic triumph will be compounded by a deep reformulation of the country’s political system, analyst Gerardo Caetano, director of the Political Science Institute at the public University of the Republic, told IPS.

Larrañaga’s appearance on the scene signalled a shift towards the centre by the National Party, dominated over the past 20 years by a centre-right current that espouses neo-liberal economic policies, led by former president Luis Alberto Lacalle (1990-1995), he explained.

Another notable phenomenon is the unprecedented plunge in popularity of the governing Colorado Party, whose candidate, Guillermo Stirling, is expected to take less than 10 percent of the vote.

The Colorado Party has ruled Uruguay for most of its 174 years as an independent nation, with the exception of the periods of civil war in the 19th century, a handful of National Party governments, and two dictatorships in the 20th century (1933-1934 and 1973-1985).

Just over 2.4 million of Uruguay’s 3.4 million people will vote on Sunday (voting is compulsory). In addition to electing a new president, all 99 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and the 30 seats in the Senate are up for grabs.

To win outright, Vázquez needs to take 50 percent plus one vote.

The parliamentary elections have taken on a special significance, because by winning a majority in both houses of Congress, the leftist coalition will be able to ignore the most hard-line opposition and negotiate the support of the legislators led by Larrañaga – seen as entirely feasible – to obtain the special majorities required to enact certain laws.

The rift that has separated the left and the two traditional parties that jumped on the neo-liberal bandwagon in the 1990s was further deepened by the current administration of Colorado Party President Jorge Batlle.

This veteran politician from an old political family intensified the neo-liberal focus of his predecessors, Colorado leader Julio María Sanguinetti (1985-1990 and 1995-2000) and Lacalle.

But Batlle is coming to the end of his term completely discredited and abandoned by part of his own party and by the National Party, which was a staunch ally during much of his administration.

A similar political cost is being paid today by the centre-right Sanguinetti and Lacalle, who governed basically in coalition since the restoration of democracy in 1985, designed the amnesty law for those guilty of committing human rights crimes under the dictatorship – when Uruguay had the region’s largest number of political prisoners and torture victims in proportion to the population – and who now are seen as sharing the responsibility for the socioeconomic collapse of 2002, which occurred under Batlle.

The Colorado administration that will hand over the reins on Mar. 1, 2005 to the winner of Sunday’s elections will leave behind strengthened macroeconomic fundamentals, bolstered by improved performance by the agro-export sector (dairy products, leather, meat and wool are Uruguay’s main exports) which has benefited from higher international commodity prices and expanded market access.

However, these improvements have not been felt by the majority of the population, 31 percent of which has slipped into poverty since the 2002 economic crisis, as neither incomes nor the employment rate have rallied.

A recession that began in 1998 preceded the debacle in 2002, when a financial and currency crisis led to a ballooning of the public debt to nearly 13 billion dollars – 105 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) – by last June.

Bank frauds and bankrupt banks, depositors who lost their savings, skyrocketing unemployment, declining incomes and quality of jobs, the growth of social marginalisation and slum neighbourhoods, and soaring poverty paint a panorama to which Uruguayans, whose country was once known as the Switzerland of Latin America, are not accustomed.

Production plunged more than 15 percent between 2000 and 2002, the peso fell from 15 to 29 against the dollar in 2002, the unemployment rate set a new national record of 20 percent, real income shrank 25 percent, and the number of people living below the poverty line doubled, to the point that 54 percent of Uruguayan children are living in poverty today.

But steady economic growth since 2003 will give the new government some breathing room to implement the changes promised by both Vázquez and Larrañaga, which point in a similar direction but have major differences.

The Broad Front, which was created in 1971, is made up of a wide mix of socialists, communists, social democrats, centre-left Christian democrats, former urban guerrillas and politicians who have abandoned the two traditional parties.

The leftist alliance has pledged to bolster Uruguay’s productive apparatus, take measures to address the social emergency, foster creativity and R&D in science and technology, deepen democratic participation and help the country fully integrate into the region.

The Broad Front has also promised responsible and disciplined fiscal and debt policies while maintaining macroeconomic balance and putting an emphasis on the redistribution of wealth, attacking poverty, and strengthening the role of the state in controlling the financial system and stimulating production, in conjunction with the private sector.

In addition, Vázquez said he would launch an offensive against corruption and the machinery of power built up over 20 years, purge the military of remnants of its dictatorial past, and take a proactive stance on human rights questions in order to investigate the fate of the nearly 200 Uruguayans who became the victims of forced disappearance here and in Argentina in the 1970s.

Larrañaga has also stated that he would boost national production, fight poverty, and put a greater focus on a unified Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade bloc, which is comprised of Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.

The approach to Mercosur taken by both Vázquez and Larrañaga is in line with the position shared by left-leaning presidents Néstor Kirchner of Argentina and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.

But it contrasts sharply with the foreign policy of the Batlle administration, which has put a stronger priority on ties with the United States than with the South American bloc, said international relations expert Alberto Methol Ferré.

Caetano concurred that either of the two leading candidates would undertake a shift in favour of a unified Mercosur distanced from Washington’s current world view.

But the analyst underlined that Vázquez is “much closer than Larrañaga to the so-called Buenos Aires Consensus” signed by Kirchner and Lula in October 2003 in the Argentine capital.

That document outlines an alternative common path that rejects the neo-liberal, free-market economic development approach taken by most of Latin America in the 1990s and focuses on economic growth with social equality and defending the interests of South America.

Regardless of which candidate wins on Sunday, analysts have no doubt that the elections will place the country firmly within the post-neo-liberal era.

And the most likely scenario, a triumph by Vázquez, will put Uruguay in line with the shift to the left already seen in neighbouring Brazil and Argentina, as well as Venezuela.