The 2009 elections in Uruguay

Abstract

On 25 October 2009, 90% of Uruguayan citizens (2.5 million people) went to the polls to choose the president, vice president and congress that will rule the country until 2014. Former guerrilla leader, Jose Mujica, and a conservative ex-president, Luis Alberto Lacalle, battled it out in the second round of the presidential election in November. Mujica, candidate of the incumbent party, the Frente Amplio, narrowly defeated Lacalle, winning 52% of the vote. His victory continues the sequence of unlikely leaders being elected in Latin America: a woman in Chile; a Native American in Bolivia; an industrial worker in Brazil; a former Liberation Theology bishop in Paraguay, and a “golpista”dformer coup plotterdin Venezuela. Now it is Uruguay’’s turn, electing a former guerrilla leader, Jose Mujica, as President of the Republic. Mujica’’s election is particularly ironic given his role as a former top leader in one of the most sophisticated and resourceful urban insurgency guerrilla movements in the world, the Tupamaros. He is, in the words of Chasquetti (2009), the same person who ‘took up arms against democratic institutions through a messianic and foquista underground movement, coming to power on the shoulders of the institutions of the very same democracy he wanted once to destroy’. Despite Mujica having been detained and tortured during the military regime (1973–1985), all signs indicate that his government will be a natural continuation of Tabare Vazquez’’s (2005–2009) administration, i.e. another example of a moderate, centre-left government. 1. Background