Mercosur faces a tense future, the president-elect of Uruguay said on Monday, referring to a diplomatic spat between regional heavyweight economies Brazil and Argentina. Brazil’s right-wing leader Jair Bolsonaro and Argentina’s incoming leader, left-leaning Peronist Alberto Fernandez, have sparred openly.
Luis Lacalle Pou of the center-right National Party won Uruguay’s presidency after his rival conceded four days after a runoff election. A second vote count by the country's Electoral Court confirmed and widened the neck to neck difference between the president elect and the incumbent candidate
Uruguay Sunday's presidential runoff results have been so tight that the Electoral Court will only make a definitive announcement sometime late this week after it has completed counting all votes, including some 34.000, classified as “observed”. This is because the difference between the two candidates is some 29.000 votes.
This Sunday 2.7 million Uruguayans will cast their ballots in the presidential runoff, which according to all opinion poll forecasts, will have Luis Lacalle Pou, the leader of an opposition multicolor alliance as head of the Executive next March, but equally significant, power switching, it will mark the end of fifteen years of almost undisputed predominance of a catch-all coalition, Broad Front, which ruled South America's smallest country for three consecutive five-year mandates.
In a tense debate a week and little of the second round of the presidential election in Uruguay, on Wednesday night the candidates offered profound differences both in terms of economy, public security and the country's positioning in foreign policy mentioning the dictatorship of Venezuela.