By EMILIO CAFASSI*

Uruguay's Broad Front is no longer that hope, but a 15-year management trajectory (2005-2020), with its undoubted chiaroscuro

The long night seems to be giving way on the eastern bank of the Río de la Plata, where the first light has appeared gently on the horizon, although only on November 24th will we know whether it will be accompanied by the necessary wind to dissipate the dark cloak that has enveloped us for the last five years. In that case, we would leave behind five years of social ruin, destruction of rights and freedoms, together with the infamous corruption scandals that have marked this period.

I am excited about this prospect, although the election result as a whole leaves me with a bittersweet aftertaste. Not because I am infected by the exultant enthusiasm that blossomed among the Broad Front activists in the territories, induced by the encouraging desire for a sweeping advance in this first round, which in some turned into subjective discouragement soon after, given the rigor of the facts. Although I recognize that the margins of error in the polls can widen, it seemed unlikely that all the institutes had more or less convergent predictions and that all of them ruled out a victory in the first round.

I did not expect more votes in the legislative results. That is why I did not travel, although my memories go back to the celebrations of the Broad Front victories in Montevideo, which have always been some of the happiest moments of my life. Especially that night, when Pepe Mujica won the presidency and thousands of hugs were thrown out of our arms and our throats sang until dawn, no longer literary, but literal, through the streets of the city center and along the waterfront.

I cannot help but rejoice at the absolute majority in the Senate, at the approach of the majority in the Chamber of Deputies, and even less, in subtractive terms, at the parliamentary exclusion of the ultra-rightist Manini Ríos and the multi-serving Mieres. Although overshadowed by the defeat of the white Yes ballot, a thorn that revives past disappointments, like that one, also in that 2009 of joy, with the same bitter contrast. Then the referendums of the pink ballot, repealing the sinister law of expiration, and of the white ballot incorporating the vote abroad for the diaspora were lost, both still expressions of backwardness and lack of scruples, aggravating our debt to history.

I disagree with the critical conclusion of former Vice President Lucía Topolansky regarding the relevance of the PIT-CNT [Plenário Intersindical dos Trabalhadores – National Convention of Workers] initiative to call a plebiscite to amend an article of the Constitution in order to guarantee and expand social security. In statements to her local radio station, M24, stated that the discussion about the plebiscite “diverts efforts and energies” while at the same time “generating conflicts and tensions in the base committees”.

I do not deny that these tensions have arisen, although I do not know the details, but it is most likely that they are due to the dilatory attitude of the Broad Front itself, of postponing debates and waiting for almost exclusive consensus, particularly when it comes to initiatives by social movements, to avoid them through the shortcut of “freedom of action”. This is not the first time, it is one more account in a large string of brakes and subsequent failures of direct democracy initiatives that emerged in the dynamics of identity construction and demands by social movements.

Conversely, I believe that any non-partisan political debate, such as those generated by direct democracy institutions (referendums or plebiscites), allows discussions to be transversal, enriching the argumentation, as opposed to mere emotion or tradition, a field in which the left and progressivism should feel at ease. Furthermore, although it is not the only way to appeal to these institutions, convergence with the national election is perhaps the most viable way to use this tool of citizen power.

Thus, attributing them a distraction not only discourages, but also disincentivizes mechanisms that should be expanded both in frequency and scope, among other reasons, to encourage more assiduous contact with citizens and distance themselves from traditional parties. Even more so in this case, which I discussed in a previous article, concluding that the Uruguayan workers' movement launched, with the initiative, a timely and precise counteroffensive, overcoming the defensive moment to carry forward a forceful questioning, which once again proves to be an example on a global level.

However, I share the opinion of Lucía Topolansky, who is also a historical reference in the sector that won almost half of the votes for the Front – the Popular Participation Movement (MPP) –, that the Broad Front has great possibilities in the election, a prediction that is also based, as indicated by researcher and political scientist Oscar Bottinelli, on the structure and organizational capacity of the Broad Front, which is not just a slogan, but a cohesive force that articulates its militancy with the citizens.

On the other hand, it seems unlikely that the National Party (PN) candidate, Delgado, will be able to gather all the votes from the first round of the members of the government coalition that he himself aspires to recreate. Delgado should try to keep all the votes that went to the parties in the current government coalition for himself. If I may be ironic about Freud's theory of psychosexual development, he would be fixated on the anal retentive phase. The Broad Front, on the other hand, should capture some fragments of this electorate, although not exclusively from it.

Both forces will have to develop strategies to capture the votes needed to win. Lucía Topolansky considers the possibility of seeking some programmatic coincidences with parties that did not enter parliament, while Bottinelli suggests appealing to the exacerbation of current and historical rivalries and incompatibilities. Undoubtedly, the current program of the Front, with its strong environmentalist emphasis, could capture some of the electorate of the Intransigent Radical Ecologist Party (PERI) or, to a lesser extent, the Animalist Green Party (PVA).

I find it difficult for the Unidade Popular-Partido dos Trabalhadores (UP-PT), which participated under the slogan “Assembleia Popular” (People’s Assembly), to convey anything of its already very limited contribution, since it was practically based on criticizing the Frente Amplio in light of its alleged abandonment of the most radical causes or those committed to the most submerged. However, I believe that there is something that the Frente Amplio can salvage if it is receptive to the demands and opinions of disgruntled former militants. It is likely that a significant portion of them will express themselves by casting a blank or spoiled vote, expressions that have shown a growing trend in the series of six elections held since the constitutional reform of 1996.

The table and graph below show this trend, with the particularity that the number of null votes was at its lowest precisely when, in 2004, the Broad Front won in the first round, bringing Tabaré Vázquez to the presidency for the first time, a moment when the greatest hopes were raised. However, while the number of null votes tended to rise after that, the number of blank votes registered the largest drop in history in 2009, when Pepe Mujica was elected. The current number is by no means to be ignored.

Many sectors would like to reap this electoral harvest if it were an organized expression. They would emerge from it with at least one senator and several deputies. The question is whether the expectations of these two founding moments of the Broad Front government experience can be stimulated, attracting some of these discouraged desires.

We would exceed the space limit, in addition to overloading the reader with more tables and graphs, if we were to detail at the same time the evolution of the comparative behavior of the Broad Front between the first and second rounds, which we will leave for another opportunity. Let us just say that, as it has always been the first minority, its expansion rate is more limited than that of those that followed it (the Colorado Party and the National Party in the five previous elections), although this scarcity is reversed if we stop considering the second minority and compare it with the sum of all its adversaries.

Just as the Broad Front is no longer that hope, but a 15-year management trajectory (2005-2020), with its undoubted chiaroscuro, neither is the official coalition (2020-2025) a merely regressive possibility, but the proven and still current incarnation of decadence, venality and popular suffering.

Historical series of blank and invalid votes in the first round

Progression of blank, null and total votes (first round)

We will always need to take stock, look back, and hold theoretical and programmatic debates to question ourselves as rigorously as possible about our own production of disillusionment. But until the 24th, the tastings will have to give way to constant nourishment. The ideological sybarism that explains many subjective impacts – and that often leads to my bittersweet aftertaste – now requires a rinse to concentrate on all the steps and details necessary to regain the helm of Uruguayan progressivism embodied in the Broad Front. The course and the navigation chart are indelibly defined in the program.

Boarding!!!

*Emilio Cafassi is senior professor of sociology at the University of Buenos Aires.

Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves.

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