Cordiality and moderation as the left returns to power in Uruguay

The Eastern Republic of Uruguay, which for the past five years has been ruled by President Luis Lacalle Pou of the National Party, will be handed over on 1 March 2025 to Yamandú Orsi, candidate of the leftist coalition Frente Amplio, winner in the second round of the presidential elections, after winning (49.8% of the vote) against the centre-right candidate of the National Party, Álvaro Delgado (45.9%). 

Uruguay, which has a population of almost 3.5 million, imposes compulsory voting, a right and duty which 90% of voters exercised on this occasion. 

At a time when left-right antagonism has reached acute levels of confrontation almost everywhere in the Americas, it is striking that the defeated Delgado immediately congratulated the winner and made himself available to him, and that the winner, Yamandú Orsi, not only accepted the offer and launched a permanent dialogue with the opposition during the five years of his future term of office, but also warned his supporters of the need for a permanent dialogue with the opposition, but also to warn his most enthusiastic supporters that ‘you must understand that part of our country has different feelings from ours, people who will also contribute to building a better country, and whom we also need’. 

According to the promises made by both candidates during the election campaign, this collaboration will not be difficult, as both agree that relaunching economic growth and reducing the deficit is a priority. 

Both have also pledged not to increase the tax burden, while at the same time they have pledged to fight relentlessly against growing crime, linked, as in the rest of the continent, to drug trafficking and the penetration of drug gangs and cartels. 

To highlight an important discrepancy, while Delgado advocated that Uruguay should persist in strengthening international agreements within multilateral cooperation, Orsi is more inclined to strengthen regional ties, both Mercosur and those encompassing various groups of countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia. 

Yamandú Orsi, 57 years old, who came from the classic working class, is a famous history professor, whose knowledge he transmits under the common denominator that all the civilisations, cultures and people who have successively passed through this world have helped to build it and have left a legacy that is worth studying and, above all, preserving in its best achievements. 

Far from stridency and inflammatory speeches, Orsi insists that his formula for government will be ‘a national dialogue through which we find the best solutions for everyone, following our own vision of course, but also listening very carefully to what others tell us’. 

In this atmosphere, almost unheard of in a world polarised globally, regionally and locally, it is not surprising that Yamandú Orsi immediately received effusive congratulations from colleagues as far apart as Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Argentina's President Javier Milei, as well as many other European and American leaders. 

According to the Uruguayan constitution, Orsi cannot be re-elected consecutively for another term. If he wants to run again, he will have to wait at least one legislature. This was the case of his predecessor, Tabaré Vázquez, who presided over the country from 2005 to 2010 and then from 2015 to 2020. 

As in most Latin American countries, the transfer of power from one administration to the next takes several months. In the case of Uruguay, it will take until 1 March, when the president-elect will be sworn in with the attributes of power before the two chambers of the legislature, which have also been renewed simultaneously. The Frente Amplio has a majority in the Senate (16 of the 30 seats) and a large minority majority (48 of the 99 seats) in the Chamber of Deputies.