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Weekly Report - 19 February 2015 (WR-15-07)

Uruguay’s Mujica makes way for Vázquez

Uruguay’s President José Mujica will conclude his five-year term in a matter of days. The former Tupamaro guerrilla, who will turn 80 in May, introduced some groundbreaking legislation in the social sphere - legalising abortion and same-sex marriage - and gained worldwide attention for the legalisation of the sale, cultivation and distribution of marijuana. By his own admission he failed to deliver a much-needed shake-up of the education sector or what, upon taking office in 2010, he called the “mother of all reforms” - to the State. He took some unilateral decisions on State policy, however, which infuriated the political opposition, notably accepting six former Guantánamo detainees from the US last December.

Mujica’s successor, former president Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010), has already made several overtures to the opposition to try and improve the poisonous relations bequeathed by Mujica; in part Vázquez is motivated by concern that the radical Left in the ruling Frente Amplio (FA) seems intent on causing him difficulties. Vázquez met senior politicians from all of the opposition political parties last month, offering to keep them abreast of any of his government’s legislative initiatives through permanent dialogue; and he has offered them a total of 25 positions on the boards of state companies and other entities to fill as they choose. The three main opposition parties accepted his offer. The centre-right Partido Nacional (PN, Blancos) was the last to do so on 11 February.

The opposition clearly hopes relations will improve with Vázquez in power. After Mujica visited five of the six former Guantánamo detainees on 12 February in their house in Montevideo for the first time since their arrival two months earlier, PN Deputy Jaime Trobo took the opportunity to savage him for accepting the men without consulting congress. “You have to be clear, open, transparent and honest over these issues. Uruguay is not a monarchy, it is a Republic,” he said.

Mujica urged the men to take up some of the job offers that have come their way, arguing from his experience as a prisoner held in solitary confinement for 10 years that it was essential for them to begin to rebuild their lives. Each one will shortly receive US$15,000 a month from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which is poised to take over the cost of their upkeep, which so far has been absorbed by the Uruguayan State.

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