Yamandú Orsi, the moderate without charisma who will keep Uruguay in the political center

Yamandú Orsi does not arouse great passions, but neither does it generate important rejections: the elected president of Uruguay It is, in a way, the reflection of a country allergic to extremes, polarizations and excesses. Orsi is serious, something that the Uruguayan citizen appreciates.

A 57-year-old history teacher, when the campaign began Orsi did not have everything to win: the majority of Uruguayans considered that Luis Lacalle For He had made a good government, and it was believed that the governing coalition could retain power for another five years.

Orsi will not exude charisma, it is true, but he is at the same time a politician whom even those who would never vote consider solvent. Alvaro Delgado Lacalle Pou’s candidate, did not have the charisma that would propel him as a candidate either, and he lost strength in the final stretch of the campaign against an Orsi who made no mistakes.

The rural areas of the country, traditionally refractory to the Frente Amplio (FA), this time gave less support than usual to the National Party of Lacalle Pou y Delgado, and that was decisive in reaching a majority that the left always begins to build on the base its advantage in Montevideo, the country’s capital.

Julio María Sanguinetti twice president, often says that Uruguay is “an essentially social democratic state”, whether the left or the right governs.

Thus, Orsi will hardly change Uruguay’s positions excessively at the international level, much less will he establish an alliance with governments like the Venezuelan one. Nicolas Maduro. In the Río de la Plata, which separates Argentina from Uruguay, frozen weather is expected, since it is difficult to Javier Mileyrefractory to the left, is related to Orsi.

Married and father of two children, the man who will assume the presidency on March 1, 2025 was a secondary school history teacher and businessman for much of his life. Critic of the second Broad Front government of Tabare Vazquez (2015-2020), sought the support of the veteran former president Jose Mujica (2010-2015) in the final stretch of the electoral campaign.

Orsi’s father grew grapes that he sold to wineries. His mother was a seamstress. While they lived in the countryside, where he was born, young Yamandú did not go to kindergarten. It was his sister Maria del Luján seven years older, his first “teacher”, the person with whom he learned to read and write.

When he was five years old, a herniated disc suffered by his father forced the Orsi to move to the city of Canelones, where they opened a warehouse in which the entire family worked and also lived.

As a teenager, with Uruguay still governed by a military dictatorship (1973-1985), Orsi began to become interested in politics, while he was in high school and helping out by working in the family warehouse.

Mayor of the Department of Canelones between 2020 and 2024, Orsi faced a situation at the beginning of the campaign that could cost him the presidency and his political career: a trans sex worker accused him of hitting her. Orsi did not hide, he answered all the press questions and was finally vindicated, because the complainant admitted that she had fabricated the story.