Opinion • Diego Castro • November 21, 2024 • Leer en castellano

Uruguay is undergoing political dynamics similar to those at work in the rest of Latin America: governments swing from one party to another and there has been a general and increasingly polarized shift to the right . On the last Sunday of November, Uruguayans will vote in the second round of the presidential election, selecting a head of state who will hold office for the next five years.

In the first round on October 27, Yamandú Orsi, the candidate of the progressive Frente Amplio (FA), won 44 percent of the vote, but polls suggest that the outcome of the second round will be close.

His rival is Alvaro Delgado from the National Party, the right-wing party currently in power. Delgado won 27 percent of the vote in the first round. Four other parties joined with the National Party to create the Republican Coalition (CR, in its Spanish acronym), which together won just over 47 percent of the vote in the first round. The CR, a recent creation, defeated progressives in the second round of the 2019 election.

Whoever wins the presidency in late November will need to seek support outside of their bloc, as neither coalition has a majority in the Chamber of Deputies. The FA won 48 seats, the CR 49 and Identidad Soberana two. The new president will be weaker than those of previous governments, when ruling parties enjoyed parliamentary majorities. The FA has a slight advantage in the senate, with 16 out of 30 senators.

The results of the first round unfolded mostly as expected, although there were some surprises. The first was the shoddy results of the military party, which is called Cabildo Abierto (this translates roughly as “Open town council”), which went from three senators and 11 deputies down to only two seats in parliament.

The other surprise was the entry of Identidad Soberana [Sovereign Identity] into parliament, with two seats. Gustavo Salles leads the party. He is a histrionic lawyer, who cultivates an anti-establishment persona, a critic of extractivism and Agenda 2030 and an anti-feminist crusader who claims to defend traditional family values.

Cabildo Abierto continues to support the Republican Coalition, while Identidad Soberana called on its supporters to spoil their votes in the second round. Members of these small parties will be key to the formation of majorities in congress.

There were also two referenda during the national election in October. One sought to allow police to legally carry out nighttime house searches; the other sought to modify the management of pension funds. Both failed to pass, receiving only around 40 percent of votes.

These referenda can be interpreted as a positive experience, despite the failure to pass the changes to pensions, especially as we think through future challenges. Referenda are a well-established tool in Uruguay that require organizational effort and allow for the production of popular mandates. The results suggest a possible rupture between social organizations and a progressive government, should it return to power in Uruguay.

Legislation by the people

Uruguay’s constitution establishes means through which citizens can repeal or propose new laws or amend existing ones. There are two mechanisms to do so: a referendum, in which a vote is held to strike down an existing law, and a plebiscite, which is used to change the constitution.

Activating a plebiscite or referendum requires signatures from 10 percent of the electoral roll (approximately 270,000 people). Parliament can also convene a plebiscite. In this case, signature collection mandated the plebiscite on social security, whereas the parliament mandated the one on nighttime raids. Both needed to win a simple majority of votes to pass.

Radical organizations have often used popular consultations to resist neoliberal privatization. There have been more than 20 plebiscites and referenda since the return of democracy in 1985.

Right-wing parties endorsed and promoted the plebiscite on night raids; unions, social organizations and some left-wing parties championed the one on pensions. The right expected a stronger voter turnout for the measure on nighttime raids, as it drills down on punitive proposals in a climate of growing insecurity and expanding drug trafficking in working class neighborhoods.

The vote on social security reform effectively anticipates the balance of power should Frente Amplio return to government. This reform rested on three main ideas: to return the retirement age to 60 (the current government raised it to 65), to tie pension payments to the  minimum wage and to eliminate the private fund management system known as the Pension Savings Fund Administration (AFAPS).

The demand for these changes emerged in response to reforms passed by the right-wing government. The Frente Amplio did not support them, although some individual members did. That’s why there were Frente Amplio members campaigning for the Yes position and also for the No position.

The Communist Party, the Socialist Party and other smaller groups were among supporters of the plebiscite within the Frente Amplio. Although the Communist Party received the second highest number of votes within the Frente Amplio’s coalition, it still received less votes than in 2019. Many of the union leaders who supported the pension reform belong to the Communist Party.

Former president José Mujica was chief among opponents of the plebiscite within the FA. He stated on several occasions that approving the reform would cause economic chaos. More than 100 economists affiliated with the Frente Amplio also criticized the proposed reforms to the pension system, arguing that they were not in the country’s best interest. Should the FA win, almost the entire group in charge of the new government’s economic policy, including the future Minister of Economy, will be among opponents of the reform.

Along with antagonists in the FA, all of the right-wing, the pension companies themselves, the chambers of commerce and agribusiness rejected the reform.

It is important to note that privatized pension funds are the financial engine of forestry, soybean and real estate speculation among other economic sectors. Eliminating the AFAPS would have been the best course of action for those of us who oppose dispossession in Uruguay, as it is a key investor in extractive and industrial sectors. Between 1996 and 2023, 37 percent of AFAPS’s total investments went to road and rail infrastructure, 28 percent to agricultural and forestry activities, and seven percent to real estate.

The most powerful within the system are well aware of all this. They campaigned in the media and used right- and leftwing personalities to generate fear and spread half-truths and lies. In spite of this, 40 percent of the population voted to back the reform.

Many of the Frente Amplio’s voters disregarded the advice of party economists and the “wise old man,” as Mujica is called. Seventy percent of FA voters voted in favor of pension reform. In addition, 30,000 voters (which is approximately 1.5 percent of the electorate) voted only for pension reform and not for candidates for office.

It appears that FA voters are willing to take greater redistributive and anti-profit pension risks than FA party leaders. Most of the latter signaled clearly that “business” will not be touched, even if it means that retirees who paid taxes and worked all of their lives receive a pension that puts them well below the poverty line.

Struggles beyond the ballot box

Many of the social forces deployed in Uruguay in recent years do not translate into party politics and the programs that dominant political actors and coalitions advance lack significant differences.

This is the case of the feminist fight against patriarchy and more recent struggles against plunder and dispossession, especially those linked to water.

Uruguay’s parliamentary left is fully integrated into the dynamics of capital. Its developmentalist outlook and blind faith in economic growth makes it dependent on extractive initiatives. It has become increasingly pragmatic, assuming the dominant economic logic without proposing major changes in the social order. Only a few dare to go out on a limb and make awkward statements about care for the environment, as if it were something external, as if everything can be fixed through payments, as if what we do to the earth we are not doing to ourselves.

It seems that the urgency around the salt water crisis that rocked Montevideo last year did not reach progressive insiders, nor has the community’s capacity to respond to acute hunger brought on by the pandemic. Once again, political actors call for cash transfers to poor families. Their insistence on cash transfers comes in a context of a high level of community organization that led to the creation of more than 700 soup kitchens.

Connections between these struggles and other community initiatives and the parliamentary left are scarce or non-existent. This stands in contrast to the deep connections between left parties and more traditional forms of mobilization, such as labor unions.

We desperately need to stop the advance of extractivism and violence in Uruguay. Without romanticizing popular referenda, they can be powerful tools for identifying the lack of real differences between competing electoral factions. They are one way in which we can intervene in a concrete and timely manner to help create the future we’re fighting for.