Brazil & Southern Cone - March 2012 (ISSN 1741-4431)

“Education, education, education.” This was the cry of President José Mujica during his inaugural speech in March 2010 and exactly two years into his term in office it could be argued that his government has delivered on the first of those three promises by means of an accord to reform the education system with all of the country’s political parties. Only when congress approves the accord, and it is actually implemented, could it be maintained that he has delivered on all three promises.

Uruguay is in a very small minority of countries in Latin America where the government and the opposition are capable of sitting down together and formulating a state policy to address a specific issue. It is far more common for governments across the region to stigmatise the opposition as a destabilising, unpatriotic force than to consider that it might have anything to add to the democratic debate; to subordinate the interests of the country to party or even personal interests; in short, to polarise politics rather than to pursue consensual politics.

Mujica made it very clear from the moment he took power that he valued the contribution of the opposition to the country’s development, and that the doors of the presidential palace would always be open to politicians from opposing parties to express their views on any issues in the national interest. His inclusiveness is one of the character traits most esteemed by Uruguayan voters, even if it has at times caused him difficulties with his own coalition, the left-wing Frente Amplio (FA); the more left-wing constituent parties have frequently urged him to push through more radical policies and to use the FA’s congressional majority to sideline the opposition Partido Nacional (PN, Blancos), the Partido Colorado (PC, Colorados) and the small Partido Independiente (PI).

Mujica has steadfastly resisted this pressure and he reaped his reward in late February when all of these opposition parties agreed to share the political cost of reforming the country’s education system. Whether he can persuade them to join the FA in undertaking what he has described as “the mother of all reforms”, revamping and modernising the State by reducing bureaucracy and shaking up the public administration to allow the state machine to function more efficiently, is a moot point. It would almost certainly need to be this year, before jostling ahead of the 2014 presidential and congressional elections begins in earnest. But, the education accord was a good start.

The education accord was made slightly easier by the broad political consensus that Uruguay’s once enviable education system now looks slightly beleaguered. Standards have been falling, truancy rising, and working conditions for teachers have deteriorated. Uruguay finished in 63^rd position out of 142 countries in the latest World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitiveness report, but it came beneath this in all of the important education indicators. It finished in 71^st place for the quality of primary education; 83^rd for the overall quality of the education system; and a worrying 104^th for the quality of maths and science education. Furthermore, while primary and tertiary education enrolment figures were very good, secondary education enrolment – perhaps the most significant level – was only 87.9%, putting Uruguay in 70^th place.

For an upwardly mobile country like Uruguay, these figures are simply unacceptable. The accord envisages a number of reforms to try and improve the education system. These range from a new institute to evaluate education standards and the transformation of the Universidad del Trabajo del Uruguay (UTU) into a Universidad Tecnológica, which will have a number of campuses across the country, to greater decentralisation of education services, including granting more decision-making power to the Codicen, the maximum education authority, which is composed of five members elected by the political parties and teachers’ unions. These unions raised some objections to the reform proposals but Mujica appears to have managed to assuage their concerns with a promise of higher salaries and improved resources.

Senator Jorge Larrañaga, a leader of the Blancos, hailed the accord as democratic coexistence par excellence. The leader of the Colorados, Pedro Bordaberry, was less effusive. He expressed his contentment with the accord but argued that the FA administration had a poor track record in actually efficiently implementing policies and reforms. The public-private partnership (PPP) deal for infrastructure work is a prime example, he argued, having been approved three months ago but as yet no PPP projects have been rolled out. The cross-party consensus should ensure that the aspects of the reform that need to be approved by congress sail through, although the Mujica administration’s reform of the penal code has been mired in congress for months.

Military-civilian interaction

One interesting aspect of the proposed reforms is increased cooperation between the military and civil society in an effort to provide training for unemployed young Uruguayans and to enable them to pick up qualifications to launch their careers without years and years of studies. Unemployment in Uruguay is low, at just 5.7%, but much of this is youth unemployment.

Some 120 youths will shortly begin three-year courses in air force centres, receiving training in aircraft maintenance, applied electronics and aeronautical engineering, and other related areas, as part of the education reform. Others will learn trades such as bricklaying and carpentry, in three to six-month courses supplied by the army, alongside military trainees. Civil students will be exempt from military instruction, and only those coming from far away will live on site. The collateral benefit is the forging of closer links between civil society and the military.

• State reform

“No changes are harder than cultural changes, but this country needs a strong, vigorous and modern State,” President Mujica said during a short 10-minute television and radio broadcast to open congress on 1 March, his second anniversary in power. The opposition, while it has expressed its readiness to work with the Mujica administration in certain areas, such as education, argues that the reform Mujica wants to carry out of the State should be mirrored within the FA administration itself. Ana Lía Piñeyrúa, a potential presidential candidate for the Blancos in 2014, said the government’s good intentions always collided with “incompetent execution and opposition from the more radical elements of the FA”.