MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Former guerrilla leads Uruguay’s ruling coalition presidential primary

Charismatic leader Jose “Pepe” Mujica

Uruguay’s presidential hopeful and former guerrilla leader Jose Mujica leads comfortably in the ruling coalition’s coming primary scheduled for next June 28th, according to the latest public opinion poll released this week.

Mujica figures with a vote intention of 57% while runner up and his main contender former Economy minister Danilo Astori has 34% and even more distant Marcos Carámbula, 6%. Pollster Cifra said the 1001 interviews were done during the first week of April and also pointed out it only refers to the 45% followers of the Broad Front coalition who revealed they would be voting next June.

Compared to the previous poll Mujica and Astori gained a few points, the percentage of undecided dropped and so did vote intention for Mr. Carambula.

Presidential elections in Uruguay are scheduled for the last Sunday of next October.

Cifra also revealed vote intention for October’s presidential election based on data collected during the first week of April.

The percentages show the ruling coalition with a vote intention of 45%, followed by the main opposition force National party with 35%, the Colorado party 7% and the Independents, 2%.

The numbers indicate that the Broad Front of President Tabare Vazquez is one percentage point ahead of the opposition which is crucial since, according to the Uruguayan constitution a run off a month later is inevitable if no party manages 50% plus one vote in the first round.

However analyst Eduardo Gonzalez from Cifra cautioned that it was too early to advance any probable results, just tendencies, and recalled that in 2004, the Broad Front finally managed to slip by in October with 50.09% of the vote, thus avoiding the November run off.

The interviews also show that when all of the Broad Front’s votes are taken into account, (voting in Uruguay presidential elections is compulsory), Mr. Mujica has a 49% support, Astori 38% and Carambula 9%.

“This still is a comfortable 11 percentage point difference” for the former Agriculture minister, but also means that “the primary dispute is still relatively open”, said Gonzalez.

An interesting sideline of the primaries is a growing controversy about the reliability of public opinion polls.

Mr. Mujica said he favoured some kind of government control over the methodology employed to ensure they can be trusted and don’t misguide public opinion.

But Mr. Astori argued that polls in Uruguay are done by “honest professionals” and “I trust their intellectual honesty and obviously professional solvency”.

He added he had no motive to distrust “anybody in particular and I’m making the statement regardless of percentages, either favourable and when not so good”.