Brazil & Southern Cone - February 2013 (ISSN 1741-4431)

Former president Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010) will run for the presidency again in 2014 for the ruling Frente Amplio (FA) coalition, according to Uruguay’s weekly publication, Búsqueda. Vázquez conditioned his standing on the support of both incumbent President José Mujica and Vice-President Danilo Astori, his former economy minister: in other words, given that they these two are the figureheads of the radical and moderate wings of the coalition, on internal unity. The timing of his announcement looks designed to address a serious internal rift in the FA over adverse judicial rulings by the supreme court (SCJ), which the opposition is seeking to exploit.

Vázquez withdrew from public life in October 2011 after he made the diplomatically incendiary comment that Uruguay considered war scenarios against Argentina at the height of tension over the construction of a pulp mill on the Uruguayan banks of its fluvial frontier with Argentina in 2007. His reappearance comes as the FA radical parties are up in arms against two rulings by the five-member SCJ. The SCJ first declared unconstitutional President Mujica’s flagship policy, the “tax on the concentration of rural land” (ICIR, in the Spanish acronym), which was approved by congress in December 2011 and taxed landowners commensurate with the size of their holdings. The SCJ said the constitution was clear that land duties are collected by local governments.

For radical parties within the FA, the ICIR was one of the few policies of the Mujica administration it could celebrate as placing a greater emphasis on social and redistributive initiatives to battle inequality. Mujica had pushed it through against fierce resistance from Astori, who argued that it would deter investors and would only generate a measly US$60m anyway.

The SCJ followed its 18 February ruling against the ICIR four days later by striking down a law approved by the FA congressional majority in October 2011 invalidating the amnesty law (Ley de Caducidad), shielding those accused of human rights abuses committed during the military dictatorship (1973-1985) from prosecution. A week earlier the SCJ had transferred Judge Mariana Mota, who had been in charge of investigating 55 cases of dictatorship-era rights abuses, from her criminal jurisdiction to a new post as a judge on a civil tribunal. The Movimiento de Participación Popular (MPP), Mujica’s party, accused the SCJ of being “dinosaur lovers of impunity” seeking “to deny justice” to relatives of victims. On 25 February several thousand protesters responded to a call by the MPP to gather outside the SCJ building to demonstrate against the ruling. It also called on SCJ judges to appear before congress to explain Mota’s transfer.

The FA vice-president, Juan Castillo, insisted that “a request for information should not be confused with a violation of the separation of powers”. Senator Lucía Topolansky, Mujica’s wife, said the legislature was perfectly within its rights to seek an explanation from the judiciary and vice versa. The main opposition Partido Nacional (PN, Blancos) and Partido Colorado (PC, Colorados) were having none of it. They leapt on the MPP’s move which they denounced as tantamount to an “institutional coup”. The PC leadership committee said the threat to summon the magistrates constituted political pressure on the judiciary in clear contravention of the law.

The Blancos and Colorados are trying to seize the opportunity to recover some political relevance having been anaemic forces operating on the periphery of political life for some eight years in the face of FA congressional majorities. Opinion polls do not suggest this is likely to change in 2014 but if the FA’s internal rift deepened they might. This is where Vázquez comes in. There is nobody who has the ability to bridge the divisions between the coalition’s disparate parties like Vázquez.

• Mujica’s reaction

President Mujica himself has kept his own counsel over the supreme court ruling on the amnesty law but he reacted to the court’s adverse ruling on his ICIR land tax by mooting a constitutional reform. Blanco Senator Sergio Abreu was particularly caustic in his response: “Do the president and the Frente (Amplio) not know that instead of reforming the constitution they have to abide by it?” he asked rhetorically before accusing the FA of trying to restrict liberties and manipulate the judiciary.