Uruguay’s Presidential Primaries Put the Left Back in Pole Position

Uruguayans held primaries connected June 30, pinch nan 2 main blocs choosing their candidates for nan country’s statesmanlike predetermination successful October. Yamandu Orsi, a erstwhile precocious schoolhouse history coach and politician of nan sprawling urban-rural Canelones district, won 59 percent of votes formed for nan Broad Front, aliases FA, and will lead nan center-left conjugation into nan election. His nearest rival—Carolina Cosse, nan politician of Montevideo and a erstwhile manufacture minister—received 38 percent of votes.

Orsi’s triumph was each but guaranteed by nan endorsement of erstwhile President Jose “Pepe” Mujica, well-liked for his avuncular mode and common-sense politics. Quickly putting nan title to bed, Orsi announced that Cosse will service arsenic his eventual vice president. “We’re headed to victory,” nan 57-year-old told cheering supporters, promising to merge nan country, turn salaries and pensions, conflict rising levels of crime and present “prosperity pinch wellbeing, maturation pinch solidarity.”

Momentum seems to beryllium pinch nan FA, which governed betwixt 2005 and 2020. It picked up 42 percent of each votes cast, nan first clip nan big-tent activity spanning communists, socialists, Christian Democrats and centrist technocrats, has travel retired connected apical since primaries were first held successful Uruguay successful 1999. But turnout was astatine a record-low 36 percent, somewhat dampening nan triumphant mood.