Uruguay decides future with presidential election and plebiscite

The population of Uruguay will go to the polls this Sunday (27) to elect who will be president until 2029 and vote on two proposed changes to the country’s Constitution, which will be decided at the polls because their defenders obtained more than 10% of the electorate’s signatures or two-fifths of the votes in the General Assembly, the Uruguayan Parliament.

The current president, Luis Lacalle Pou, of the conservative National Party, will not be able to seek re-election because it is vetoed by Uruguayan legislation.

Yamandú Orsi, from the leftist Frente Ampla, a coalition that governed Uruguay between 2005 and 2020, with two terms for Tabaré Vázquez and one for José Mujica between them, leads the polls, but at a level insufficient to win in the first round. If a second vote is necessary, it will be held on November 24th.

In second place comes Álvaro Delgado, a supporter of Lacalle Pou, and in third, Andrés Ojeda, from the centrist Colorado Party.

The campaign does not seem to have excited the Uruguayan electorate and was put on the back burner by a plebiscite on pension reform that will be held alongside the presidential election.

“There were no major topics of debate, people did not mobilize, none of the candidates is charismatic. Now, they’re in this thing. But everything has been quite superficial”, said political scientist Alfonso Lessa, in an interview with the EFE agency.

The “thing” mentioned by the analyst is the proposed modification of article 67 of the country’s Constitution, presented by the largest Uruguayan trade union federation.

The text foresees the end of the Pension Savings Fund Administrators (Afap, in the Spanish acronym, private pension bodies), that is, leaving the funding of pensions solely in the hands of the State; setting the minimum retirement age at 60 years old (today it is 65 years old for those born after 1977, with transition ranges for those born before that); and the equivalence of minimum pensions and retirement benefits to the national minimum wage.

A report by the securities brokerage Nobilis, whose figures were published by the Uruguayan newspaper El País, pointed out that, if approved, the constitutional change would produce fiscal instability, an increase in country risk, a decrease in private investments and legal uncertainty, among other consequences.

The study pointed out that losses resulting from the measure could add up to US$10 billion, an exorbitant amount for a country whose GDP in 2023 was US$77.24 billion, according to data from the World Bank.

In the final stretch of the dispute, Delgado has sought to link Orsi to the proposal, which the leftist candidate says he rejects – however, parties in his coalition, such as the Communist and Socialist, support the measure.

According to the economic newspaper Ámbito, members of the Frente Amplio have made dubious statements, such as one from the senator and campaign coordinator, Alejandro “Pacha” Sánchez.

He said that, although the pension reform that will be voted on this Sunday “is not in the program” of the left-wing coalition, “it is necessary to review whether any of the activities carried out need to be done by these (private) companies or whether the State could do them ”.

At X, Delgado countered. “For once, they (the left) should be clear about their government program. They continue without explaining what the ‘non-profit savings pillar’ proposed by the Frente Amplio bases is or the ‘nationalization’ that the campaign coordinator proposed at least three times. This was the path followed by Argentina”, he criticized.

In addition to the election for president and the pension reform, Uruguayans will vote this Sunday for senator and deputy and in another plebiscite, for the Constitution to be amended to allow search, seizure and arrest operations to be carried out in homes at night.

Uruguay’s Magna Carta allows this type of action by the State only during the day.