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Uruguay Political Parties
The Colorado and National parties and, to a lesser
extent,
the Broad Front coalition, were the three major political
entities in 1990. Until the 1971 elections, the Colorado
and
National parties together accounted for 90 percent of the
votes
cast; the remaining 10 percent of the votes were divided
among
various small parties. Some of the minor parties have
followed
the lead of the major parties and sought to enhance their
electoral chances through coalitions, such as the Broad
Front.
The traditional two-party system was threatened for the
first
time by the Broad Front's victory in the Montevideo
municipal
elections in 1989, its first win on the national level.
As previously noted, a system of coparticipation
(coparticipación) in the government between the
ruling
party and the principal opposition has characterized
Uruguayan
politics since 1872. According to Weinstein, this term
best
described Uruguay's unique political process and was still
widely
used among Uruguayans in the 1980s. Coparticipation meant
that
the two traditional parties and their members were
entitled to
divide and share the governing of the country. Indeed, in
order
to govern, the majority party had to make alliances with
other
parties because being the majority party in a proportional
representation system did not necessarily mean that it had
a
simple majority in the General Assembly. For example, the
Colorado Party almost always governed in alliance with a
section
of the National Party. During the first years of the
Sanguinetti
administration, the National Party refrained from
systematic
opposition, thereby helping to ease the legislative
passage of
government policies. The Colorado Party was expected to do
the
same for the Lacalle government. Sharing political power
also has
been determined by the principle of parity
(paridad),
meaning that the losing party's participation in the
government
was based on the relative electoral strength of the two
parties.
Each party permitted internal ideological divisions
because
each party could run multiple presidential candidates and
its own
slate of legislative nominees. Factions, or
sub-lemas,
fielded different lists of candidates for general
elections.
Voters expressed a preference for a list rather than an
individual candidate, and they voted for a party. The
winning
list of the party that received the most votes won the
presidency
and a percentage of the seats in the Senate and the
Chamber of
Representatives corresponding to the percentage of votes
that the
party as a whole received. National and departmental
elections
were held simultaneously every five years. Campaigns were
funded
in part by government subsidies given to the parties and
factions
in accordance with their voting strength in the previous
election.
Data as of December 1990
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