▲ Yamandú Orsi (image on the left) and Álvaro Delgado only agree on one point: their sympathy for the Peñarol soccer club.Photo Ap

Prensa Latina, Europa Press and Xinhua

La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, November 24, 2024, p. 19

Montevideo. Yamandú Orsi, candidate of the Frente Amplio, and Álvaro Delgado, of the official National Party candidate, are competing today for the presidency of Uruguay in a second round in which they start with a virtual technical tie, according to voting intention surveys, after having been the two options with the most votes in the first round of the presidential elections on October 27. In those elections, the FrenteAmplista Orsi garnered 43.85 percent of the votes compared to 26.82 obtained by the candidate of the white.

According to the main polls, the presidential ticket of Orsi and his candidate for vice president, Carolina Cosse, has around 48 percent of voting intention, while Delgado and his candidate for number twoValeria Ripoll, have the support of 46 percent of the voters. According to these data, the result could be defined by the remaining 6 percent of undecided people.

The question is whether the National Party – also known as the White Party – is capable of uniting the vote of right-wing and extreme right-wing political formations, as has already happened in the past. In 2019, the majority of parties opposed to the Frente Amplio gathered around the Republican Coalition to avoid a government of the progressives of the Frente Amplio, the political movement with the most votes as a party since 1999, although it only won once in the first round, then from the scourge of the economic crisis of 2002.

The first electoral round was held in parallel with the parliamentary elections, in which the Frente Amplio achieved the majority in the Senate and was only one deputy away from obtaining the majority in the Lower House, where it will now have to reach an agreement to achieve the government.

Orsi is a leader of the Popular Participation Movement, led by the historic former president José Mujica, and in his electoral campaign he proposed reducing the value added tax and increasing rates on large assets: Let those who have more wealth and more income pay more.

Delgado, for his part, promised not to increase taxes, because Uruguay already has a high fiscal pressureinstead proposed reducing public spending, including the salary budget.

Today’s battle between the two also divides the supporters of the Peñarol soccer club, in a country where that sport occupies a privileged place.

Both candidates represent two radically different country projects but share sympathy for the club titmousethe third at the international level to have won the Copa Libertadores on the most occasions: five times.

a head of state titmouse It had not happened in Uruguay for almost 25 years, when Julio María Sanguinetti returned to the presidential seat in 1995, a place he also assumed a decade before.

The one who fell in the middle, between 1990 and 1995, was president Luis Lacalle Herrera, a renowned Nacional fan and father of the current president, Luis Lacalle Pou.