URUGUAY’S RULING left-wing alliance narrowly failed to convert widespread popularity into a first- round victory in Sunday’s presidential election, leaving its candidate facing a run-off against his closest challenger next month.
The Frente Amplio (Broad Front) candidate, José Mujica, won 47.5 per cent of the vote, well ahead of the right-wing National Party’s Luis Alberto Lacalle on 28.5 per cent but still shy of the 50 per cent plus one vote necessary to avoid a second round.
Despite Mr Mujica’s lead going into the November 29th run-off, Mr Lacalle can count on the support of most voters who backed Pedro Bordaberry of the traditional Colorado Party. He came third with 16.5 per cent of the poll and swiftly endorsed Mr Lacalle, a former president, once he was eliminated from the race.
The Frente Amplio also lost seats in the country’s congress and will have to wait for a recount today to see if it has managed to hold on to its majority in both houses.
Mr Mujica had campaigned on the Frente Amplio’s sound management of the small, agriculturally based economy and the government’s successful social policies aimed at tackling poverty.
But many voters were critical of Mr Mujica’s guerrilla past and feared he would lead a more authoritarian or militant administration than the incumbent, Tabaré Vázquez, Uruguay’s first left-wing president.
In another blow to the former guerrilla, voters rejected a call he backed to scrap an amnesty for those responsible for human rights abuses during the dictatorship which ruled the country from 1973 to 1985.
The decision by voters is set to throw Uruguay’s handling of its “dirty war” past into confusion.
Voters had previously approved of the law in a referendum in 1989. But last week the country’s supreme court declared the law unconstitutional.
The court made its ruling in the case of a young communist militant killed while in military detention in 1974, opening the way for the prosecution of those accused of involvement in his death.
Until then only those accused of involvement in killings outside Uruguay had faced prosecution.
Among those facing trial is the father of Mr Bordaberry.
The civilian head of the military-dominated regime which ruled in the 1970s, Juan María Bordaberry is awaiting trial for his role in the murder of two opposition politicians in Argentina as part of Operation Condor, when the region’s right-wing dictatorships co-ordinated the assassination and disappearance of scores of left-wing opponents taking shelter in each other’s countries.
The dictatorship’s last leader, Gen Gregorio Álvarez, was jailed last week for 25 years for his role in the disappearance of 37 Uruguayan dissidents who disappeared in Argentina as part of Operation Condor.