With more than 90% of the votes counted by the Electoral Court, the conservative ruling party Álvaro Delgado (National Party) and the opposition Yamandú Orsi (Frente Amplio) lead the results by a wide margin and will fight for the presidency of Uruguay in the second round.
The left-wing coalition led by former president José Mújica accumulates 949,983 votes of the 2,217,473 cast, the National Party has 592,677 and the Colorado Party, 353,422.
For its part, Sovereign Identity has 58,716 votes, Cabildo Abierto 53,020 votes and the Independent Party 37,715. These numbers indicate that these political forces would be the ones that would take place in Parliament.
This Sunday, Uruguay faced elections in which citizens went to the polls to elect the president and parliamentarians for the period 2025-2030.
Taking into account that none of the eleven candidates exceeded 50% of the votes, a second round will be held on November 24 between the two most voted.
Pension reform
In addition, voters had to decide on two plebiscites: one that sought to reform the social security regime and one that sought to authorize nighttime police raids.
Neither the social security reform proposed by the single union center nor the authorization of night raids by the police were approved in the plebiscite.
The reform sought to reduce the retirement age from 65 to 60, as well as end private pension funds and equate the lowest pension to the minimum wage.
The modification of the social security regime that the Inter-Union Plenary of Workers – National Workers’ Convention had proposed did not reach the 50% of the votes it needed to move forward, nor did the authorization to carry out night searches, which according to projections of demographic companies only reached 39%.
“We did not achieve the central objective that we had established. We did not achieve it with the vote that our citizens developed today. If this trend is confirmed, which everything indicates is the case, we are not going to call what is not a victory and we are going to recognize the result,” declared the leader of the union movement, Marcelo Abdala.
The modification of the social security regime that was put to the vote today dates back to August of last year, when the Government of Luis Lacalle Pou managed to bring into force a law that raised the retirement age from 60 to 65 years and that It also allowed retirees to choose to maintain work activity.
This caused the union movement to promote a plebiscite with the aim of modifying the law and the National Constitution itself. Its objective was to equate the amount of pensions with the national minimum wage and to enable retirement again at age 60.
The proposal, which included the replacement of the Private Pension Savings Fund Administrators (AFAP, private) with a Social Security system managed exclusively by the State, divided the waters in the political system and the electorate.
The candidates for the Presidency from the parties of the Government coalition were against the union initiative, while the opposition Frente Amplio (FA) decided to leave it to the free consideration of its electorate, although its presidential candidate, Yamandú Orsi, he positioned himself against.
Meanwhile, the other matter submitted for consultation, the eventual authorization of nighttime raids, was the initiative of the parliamentarians of the ruling coalition.
According to article 11 of the Uruguayan Constitution, “the home is inviolable”, so “at night no one may enter it without the consent of his boss, and during the day, only by express order of a competent judge, in writing and in the cases determined by law.”
In this case, the Government coalition supported the initiative, while the Frente Amplio issued a resolution in which it expressed that the proposal was not “the best way to solve the serious security problems”, so it would not support it.
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