MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Scornful clashes inside Uruguay’s ruling coalition surprise public opinion

Broad Front candidates, Mujica and Astori

The dispute for Uruguay’s ruling coalition presidential nomination has spiralled to unexpected levels while a group of senior members try and work out a viable understanding between the leading hopefuls for the day after, when a unified Broad Front is essential to repeat victory in next October’s general election.

With ten days of campaigning left and fresh from hospital, former Economy minister Danilo Astori said his counterpart Senator Jose Mujica can’t be trusted and his proposals will only lead the coalition to “chaos and failure”.

“His proposals simply do not generate trust or reliability” said Astori in a radio interview confirmed by statements in his blog “astoripresident”.

Mujica also appealed to his own blog saying he was glad for the good of the coalition that Astori had left hospital, but disappointed with the attitude chosen by his counterpart to attack him.

“It’s not a very clean strategy and that hurts coming from a fellow member of the coalition”.

Primary elections are scheduled for Sunday October 28th, and Mujica is comfortably leading almost 2 to 1 over Astori who has spent the last three weeks in hospital recovering from pneumonia according to the medical report.

However the political hearsay is that he allegedly suffered a cardiopathy with severe complications since he spent most of that time in an intensive care unit.

Mujica also questioned who had awarded Mr. Astori a “certificate of universal culture and infinite sage”, adding where did had he learnt “to scorn the intelligence of others?”

Astori criticized recent statements of Mujica who said that to address the economy, “the way in is from the right wing” so as not to scare investors, but the former Economy minister argued that there was “an unavoidable contradiction between preaching right wing economics and left wing social policies”.

“You can’t say let’s go in from the right here, and in from the left here, that is chaos, total chaos and total failure. I think he never understood what the success of this government has been”, insisted Astori.

“There’s no certainty, no reliability, no path, no trust, no search for the needed confidence” he added. And if this is the course to follow, “I want off; that’s not the Broad Front I grew up in or the route chosen by President Tabare Vazquez”.

Astori also questioned the fact that Mujica said that a president must be something more than a “correct person”. He should have been involved in “hunger strikes” and in fights with the workers’ unions and other social sectors.

“I think that is going to far; or the appropriate route to reap confidence” he underlined.

“I accept to be considered a ‘correct president’ if that means “having taken all the risks and responsibilities involved as Economy minister next to President Vázquez”.

From his blog Mujica wrote he felt “sorry” for Astori and was disappointed that criticism towards him was harsher from inside the coalition than from the opposition and that there was a consistent intent in taking his words “out of context”.

“With a less clean attitude than the opposition, I must endure some of the fellows of our own coalition who attack me without even mentioning my name. They are proposing a ‘real, serious president’ and a country which is ‘not bound together with wire’. This is very painful and I think the time for games and joking is over”.

Anyhow Mujica promised “to continue campaigning for unity, the most possible inclusion campaign, because I’m convinced this is what most favours our political force”.

“There’s an abundance of phones, so whenever there are doubts please fellows just simply call me”, he added.

Meantime senior members of the coalition are growingly restless about the intensity of the in fighting. They know that a perfect blend of Mujica’s “populism” and Astori’s “correct presentation” are needed if the Broad Front is to ensure the necessary unity and attract middle of the road votes as happened in October 2004.

The third and distant hopeful Marcos Carambula pointed out that we must be thinking about “the following morning” when we have to seat round the same table and decide on the presidential ticket.

“The trustworthiness of any of the three candidates must not be part of the debate, otherwise…”