It is the first time in Uruguay’s history that as many as seven political parties have been represented in congress (see table below). Despite losing its stranglehold on executive power and its wafer-thin congressional majorities, the FA is the largest bloc in the lower chamber of congress and the senate. It has 42 deputies in the 99-seat lower chamber and 13 senators in the 30-seat senate. But it will not control the legislative agenda.
Lacalle Pou’s disparate coalition, comprising his PN, the right-of-centre Partido Colorado (PC), the right-wing Cabildo Abierto (CA), the centre-left Partido Independiente (PI), and the populist Partido de la Gente (PG), is now the dominant force in congress. Between them these five parties hold 56 seats in the lower chamber and 17 seats in the senate. The PN’s Martín Lema becomes president of the lower chamber, while PN vice-president-elect Beatriz Argimón is the new president of the senate.
Lacalle Pou could afford to lose the support of PI and PG and retain these majorities but he has no choice but to keep both the PC and CA onboard. In spite of traditional political enmity between the PN and PC, they are both committed to the governing alliance. The CA, however, is an unknown quantity. A personalist party used as the electoral vehicle of former army commander Guido Manini Ríos in his presidential bid last October, the CA’s reliability as a coalition partner has been called into question before Lacalle Pou even takes office.
Tensions with CA burst into the open over Uruguay’s municipal and departmental elections on 10 May. Manini Ríos unilaterally announced his intention on 23 January to run for mayor of Montevideo, while the other parties in Lacalle Pou’s coalition were in talks over a consensus candidate. Lacalle Pou eventually managed to defuse tensions by persuading CA to rally behind Laura Raffo as candidate for mayor of Montevideo, but the episode exposes his vulnerability to infighting breaking out in the coalition.
An economist plucked out of the private sector, Raffo will seek to end the FA’s dominance in the capital; the FA has held Montevideo since 1990 when Tabaré Vázquez was elected mayor, using the position as a springboard to the presidency in 2005. Although she is officially standing on the PI ticket, Raffo does not belong to any of the parties in the coalition despite strong ties to the PN. Her four alternates are each drawn from the other parties in the coalition.
Laura Raffo
Born in 1976 when Uruguay’s military dictatorship began, the ‘multi-colour’ coalition’s candidate for mayor of Montevideo, Laura Raffo, is daughter of Juan Carlos Raffo who, between 1990 and 2000, served one term as a PN deputy and senator, and was briefly transport and public works minister under Luis Alberto Lacalle (1990-1995), the father of the president-elect Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou.
Uruguay’s new-look congress (parenthesis denotes change in number of seats)
Lower chamber
Senate
Frente Amplio (FA)
42 (-8)
13 (-2)
Partido Nacional (PN)
30 (-2)
10 (0)
Partido Colorado (PC)
13 (0)
4 (0)
Cabildo Abierto (CA)
11 (+11)
3 (+3)
Partido Independiente (PI)
1 (-2)
0 (-1)
Partido de la Gente (PG)
1 (+1)
0 (0)
Partido Ecologista Radical Intransigente (Peri)
1 (+1)
0 (0)
Total
99
30
End of preview - This article contains approximately 624 words.
