MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US congratulates incoming Uruguayan president.

United States this Monday congratulated Uruguayan elected president Socialist Tabare Vazquez and the Uruguayan people on their peaceful exercise of the democratic process.

"Uruguay yesterday held elections for the fifth time since the restoration of civilian rule. We believe that this record demonstrates that the process of peaceful and fair elections has definitively taken route in Uruguay", said US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli.

"We congratulate the people of Uruguay on their peaceful exercise of this democratic process, and we congratulate president elect Dr. Tabare Vazquez on his victory and we look forward to working closely with him", added Mr. Ereli.

When asked if Washington anticipates problems in the bilateral relation with Uruguay since Mr. Vazquez is a Socialist and was elected as the candidate of a left wing coalition, the US Department of State discarded such a possibility.

"We have a long and positive relationship with Uruguay. We have many shared interests including combating trans-national threats to security, promoting good governance and human rights and extending economic opportunity. We have a good record of bilateral cooperation in these areas and we have every expectation that it will continue", underlined Mr. Ereli.

Monday midday Uruguay's Electoral Court responsible for the counting of Sunday's votes in the presidential and congressional elections, confirmed that according to the first vote count, Mr. Vazquez from the left wing Broad Front effectively had won with 50,9% of votes cast and Mr. Jorge Larrañaga from the National Party was runner up with 34%. The ruling Colorado party barely managed 10,5%.

This means there won't be a presidential runoff at the end of November between the two most voted candidates and that the Broad Front will have a comfortable working majority in Congress.

Mr. Vazquez announced that after a short two weeks rest he will begin naming his ministerial cabinet and this week his advisor Dr. Gonzalo Fernández is meeting with the current Executive Secretary Raul Lago to prepare the transition.

Local political analysts anticipate that Mr. Vazquez will join a group of South American presidents who feel the continent must unite to better negotiate financial relations, particularly following the experience of the nineties when many regional economies were opened and private enterprise was promoted with some successes but also an extended social unrest and rejection of liberal economics.

One of the first decisions of the incoming coalition next March is forecasted to be the full reestablishment of relations with Cuba.