Brazil & Southern Cone - March 2014 (ISSN 1741-4431)

President José Mujica entered his last year in power on 1 March, having completed 80% of his mandate. He has introduced ground-breaking liberal legislation on abortion, same-sex marriage and marijuana which has grabbed headlines worldwide and even saw Uruguay named ‘country of the year’ for 2013 by The Economist, for implementing policies which were “obviously sensible” and “increased the global sum of happiness at no financial cost”. But one indictment of his term in office is that when he came in he promised “the mother of all reforms” to revamp and modernise the State and, barring a miracle over the next 12 months, he will leave office having made very limited headway despite his ruling left-wing coalition Frente Amplio (FA) enjoying a majority in both chambers of congress.

At the turn of the year, Pedro Bordaberry, the presidential candidate for the right-wing opposition Partido Colorado (PC) in this October’s general elections, blasted the Mujica administration for neglecting issues of national importance, principally public security. Bordaberry accused the government of preferring to focus its attention on dangerous experiments, such as legalising marijuana, and issues of narrow party interest, such as repealing the Ley de Caducidad amnesty law (twice upheld in popular referendums).

Bordaberry concentrated his attack on the government’s failure to arrest a surge in homicides in recent years – security is the main thrust of his campaign, which includes collecting signatures to hold a plebiscite together with the elections on whether to lower the age of sentencing to 16 from 18 for crimes such as rape and homicide [RBS-14-01]. However, it was more intriguing that Bordaberry’s criticism of the FA’s failure to deliver on key national issues should have coincided with Mujica’s call for public sector employees to be rotated in their jobs every 10 to 15 years.

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