Montevideo: A plain-talking former leftist guerrilla is heavily favoured to win Uruguay`s presidential run-off election on Sunday and keep the country`s popular centre-left coalition in power for another five years.
Jose Mujica`s opponents claimed he would transform the South American country into a radical socialist state, but he campaigned as a consensus builder, and polls suggested most voters were convinced he would govern from the centre.
Mujica won 49 percent of the votes in October`s first round of the election, which secured another majority in Congress for the governing Broad Front coalition.
Former president Luis A Lacalle of the centre-right National Party finished second with 29 percent. But while Lacalle was expected to pick up most of the votes that went to the third-place Colorado Party, he trailed Mujica by 7 to 9 percentage points in the latest opinion polls.
Mujica, 74, said on Saturday that he would continue the policies of the current President, Tabare Vazquez, and work to unify Latin America.
As campaigning ended, Mujica insisted that "to win the vote does not mean being the owner of absolute truth," and vowed to do everything possible to build bridges and avoid creating an atmosphere of tension and drama. He said negotiation and dialogue would be his tools, and cited Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as his inspiration.
Lacalle, 68, complained that the governments of Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela have openly shown their sympathies for his opponent. "Even ruling party members should be ashamed of this intervention, because no one is going to tell Uruguayans how to vote," Lacalle said.
The National Party traded power with the right-wing Colorado Party for 150 years until the Broad Front pulled enough leftist factions together to give Vazquez a victory five years ago.
If most voters do choose Mujica, much of the credit would go to Vazquez, a Marxist oncologist and former Montevideo mayor who imposed a progressive income tax, using the additional revenue for policies that lowered unemployment and poverty, provided health care to everyone under 18 and steered the economy to 1.9 percent growth this year even as many other economies shrank.
Lacalle, in contrast, was a champion of privatization during his 1990-95 term and vowed this time to eliminate the income tax and "take a chain saw" to state bureaucracies. But he also acknowledged Vazquez`s successes, saying he would make no major changes in economic policies.
Mujica co-founded the Tupamaros, one of many Latin American leftist rebel groups inspired by the Cuban revolution in the 1960s to organise kidnappings, bombings, robberies and other attacks on US-backed right-wing governments. Convicted of killing a policeman in 1971, he endured torture and solitary confinement during nearly 15 years in prison.
Mujica said prison cured him of any illusion that armed revolution would achieve lasting social change, a theme he touched on repeatedly during the campaign.
In a July speech, he vowed to distance the left from "the stupid ideologies that come from the 1970s — I refer to things like unconditional love of everything that is state-run, scorn for businessmen and intrinsic hate of the United States.
"I`ll shout it if they want: Down with isms! Up with a left that is capable of thinking outside the box! In other words, I am more than completely cured of simplifications, of dividing the world into good and evil, of thinking in black and white. I have repented!"
In the quarter-century since a 1973-85 dictatorship ended and Mujica was granted amnesty, he helped transform the guerrillas into a legitimate political movement that is now the driving force behind the Broad Front. He became the top vote-getter in Congress and served as agriculture minister under Vazquez. But Mujica still has the appearance of an anti-politician, a gruff old man more comfortable driving a tractor on his farm than shuffling through marbled halls.
Voting is mandatory for Uruguay`s 2.5 million voters. The new president begins a single five-year term March 1.
Bureau Report
