Left-wing candidate Orsi wins Uruguay presidential election

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay: Left-wing politician Yamandu Orsi was elected president of Uruguay, official results showed on Sunday, in a rebuke by voters of five years of conservative rule.

Uruguayans went to the polls for the second round of voting in what became a tight race between Orsi, of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) alliance, and Alvaro Delgado of the National Party, a member of outgoing President Luis Lacalle Pou’s center-right Republican Coalition.

Orsi promised in a victory speech on Sunday evening to be a president “who calls again and again for national dialogue to find the best solutions.”

Delgado meanwhile conceded defeat, saying he was sending “a big hug and a greeting to Yamandu Orsi.”

Though the election will shift the balance of power in Uruguay, analysts did not foresee a massive change in the country’s economic direction, with Orsi having previously promised “change that will not be radical.”

Both candidates pledged to fight crime linked to drug trafficking and to boost economic growth, which is recovering from the slowdown brought by the Covid-19 pandemic and a historic drought.

Orsi won 1,196,798 votes compared to Delgado’s 1,101,296, the country’s Electoral Court said — 49.8 percent to 45.9 percent.

Cheers broke out in the capital Montevideo, a bastion of Frente Amplio support, when projections showing Orsi in the lead were announced.

His campaign was boosted by support from Jose “Pepe” Mujica, a former guerrilla lionized as “the world’s poorest president” because of his modest lifestyle during his 2010-2015 time in office.

Orsi, seen as an understudy of Mujica, had garnered 43.9 percent of the October 27 first-round vote — short of the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff but ahead of the 26.7 percent of ballots cast for Delgado.

The pair came out on top of a crowded field of 11 candidates seeking to replace Lacalle Pou, who has a high approval rating but is barred constitutionally from seeking a second consecutive term.

Following October legislative elections, Orsi will govern with a majority in the Senate, though the Frente Amplio is in the minority in the Chamber of Representatives.

Swing left

Orsi’s victory will see Uruguay swing left again after five years of center-right rule in the country of 3.4 million inhabitants.

In 2005, the Frente Amplio coalition broke a decades-long conservative stranglehold with an election victory and held the presidency for three straight terms.

It was voted out in 2020 on the back of concerns about rising crime blamed on high taxes and a surge in cocaine trafficking through the port of Montevideo.

Polling numbers ahead of the vote showed perceived insecurity remains Uruguayans’ top concern five years later.

A 72-year-old retiree who voted, Juan Antonio Stivan, said he just wanted the next government to guarantee “safety — to be able to go out in the street with peace of mind, as an old person, as a young person, as a child.”

Congratulations rolled in from across Latin America, including from Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum and Chile’s Gabriel Boric.

“This is a victory for all of Latin America and the Caribbean,” Lula said on X.

Outgoing leader Pou said on social media that he called Orsi “to place myself at his disposal to begin the transition as soon as I think it is appropriate.”

Voting is compulsory in Uruguay, one of Latin America’s most stable democracies, with comparatively high per-capita income and low poverty levels.

During the heyday of leftist rule, Uruguay legalized abortion and same-sex marriage, became the first Latin American country to ban smoking in public places and the world’s first nation, in 2013, to allow recreational cannabis use.