Weekly Report - 21 August 2014 (WR-14-33)

It was not supposed to be like this. When Uruguay’s former president Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010) was anointed as the presidential candidate of the ruling left-wing Frente Amplio (FA) coalition, he was the most popular politician in the country. Now, with just two months to go before general elections, Vázquez is no longer in a procession but a race. Luis Lacalle Pou, the young challenger from the opposition right-of centre Partido Nacional (PN, Blancos), has emerged as a serious threat, closing to within 10 percentage points of Vázquez in opinion polls and within touching distance in projections for an inevitable November run-off. While Vázquez has been holding crisis meetings with President José Mujica about the FA’s slide in the polls, Lacalle Pou this week moved to shore up the opposition’s weakest flank since the FA came to power in 2005: economic management.

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