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Uruguay The November 1989 Elections
Of the dozen candidates running for the presidency in
the
elections of November 26, 1989, the two front-runners were
the
National Party's Lacalle and the ruling Colorado Party's
Batlle
Ibáñez (see
table 17, Appendix). Both were from political
families and were grandsons of the founders of their
respective
parties. The tradition of public service went back even
further
for Lacalle; his great-grandfather, Juan José de Herrera,
was
minister of foreign affairs in Blanco governments in the
nineteenth century. Batlle Ibáñez--a lawyer, senator, and
leader
of the Colorado Party's majority sector, United Batllism
(Batllismo Unido--BU)--descended from three presidents:
his
great-grandfather Lorenzo Batlle y Grau (1868-72), his
great-
uncle José Batlle y Ordóñez (1903-07, 1911-15), and his
father,
Luis Batlle Berres (1947-51).
The personalities of Lacalle and Batlle Ibáñez, rather
than
policy differences, dominated the campaign, although the
issues
debated were the ones that traditionally distinguished the
two
parties. Whereas the Colorado Party emphasized the role of
the
government in promoting the national welfare, the National
Party
focused on Uruguay's people and society as being primarily
responsible for their own destiny. The more controversial
issues
included "privatization" of state enterprises---such as
the
telephone company and ports--and the extension of
university
education to the interior. Both Batlle Ibáñez and Lacalle
advocated reducing the state's economic role, seeking
foreign
investment, and taking on the leftist-led unions. One
difference
was that Batlle Ibáñez favored paying the country's
foreign debt,
whereas Lacalle favored renegotiating it
(see Foreign Policy in 1990
, this ch.). In a televised debate in October 1989,
Batlle
Ibáñez repeatedly noted their agreement on issues, while
Lacalle
distanced himself from his opponent, thereby apparently
outscoring him. In general, the campaign was very
respectful and
lacking in "dirty tricks."
Other 1989 presidential candidates included, on the
Blanco
side: Carlos Julio Pereyra, leftist leader of the MNR;
Alberto
Sáenz de Zumarán, a strongly antimilitary centrist
endorsed by
the Social Christian Movement (Movimiento Social
Cristiano--MSC);
and the CNH's Francisco Ubilles. On the Colorado side,
candidates
included Sanguinetti's former minister of labor and social
welfare, Hugo Fernández Faingold, the MAS leader; and
Jorge
Pacheco Areco, the former president (1967-72) and later
ambassador to Paraguay, as well as leader of the Colorado
and
Batllist Union (Unión Colorada y Batllista--UCB), who ran
on a
ticket with Pablo Millor Coccaro, whom he selected late in
the
campaign. Pacheco's authoritarian and austere
administration had
been widely disliked, and Pacheco had spent his previous
seventeen years out of the country--even serving as an
ambassador
for the military regime--but many Uruguayans still
nostalgically
identified him with a long-gone period of economic
stability and
security.
Of the National Party's three candidates--Pereyra,
Zumarán,
and Lacalle--Lacalle initially had the least support among
party
members (20 percent), as compared with Pereyra (28
percent) and
Zumarán (46 percent), according to a poll commissioned by
a
weekly news magazine, Búsqueda, in July 1988. This
standing was reversed, however, by September 1989 when,
according
to a poll in Montevideo published by Búsqueda, 52
percent
of those questioned voted for Lacalle, 34 percent for
Pereyra,
and 10 percent for Zumarán.
The total number of people duly registered to vote in
the
November 26, 1989, presidential elections was 2.4 million,
of
which 47.3 percent were Montevideo city residents and 52.7
percent were from the country's nineteen departments. In
an upset
for the Colorado Party, Lacalle and his running mate,
Gonzalo
Aguirre Ramírez, won after their party garnered 37.7
percent of
the 2 million votes cast, compared with the Colorado
Party's 29.2
percent, the Broad Front's 20.6 percent, and the New
Sector's
meager 8.6 percent. Other parties, including the EE-PV,
received
a total of 3.9 percent.
The other big winner was the Broad Front, whose mayoral
candidate, Tabaré Vázquez, captured Montevideo's municipal
government. Vázquez, a cancer specialist and professor of
oncology, as well as a member of the PSU's central
committee,
became the city's first Marxist mayor by obtaining 35
percent of
the total vote.
The Colorado Party lost not only the elections but also
ten
departments and fifteen seats in the Chamber of
Representatives.
The National Party took seventeen departments, obtaining
thirtynine of the ninety-nine seats in the Chamber of
Representatives;
the Colorado Party, thirty; the Broad Front, twenty-one;
and the
New Sector, nine. Of the thirty Senate seats, the Blancos
won
twelve, the Colorados nine, the Broad Front seven, and the
New
Sector two. Aguirre's own fledgling RV party overtook the
veteran
PLP and equaled the MNR by winning 112,000 votes, thereby
winning
two seats in the Senate and three in the Chamber of
Representatives.
Data as of December 1990
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