Laura Raffo, the former candidate for the Mayor of Montevideo (IM) on whom the whites had bet for a new contest in the capital in 2025, sparked the debate within the National Party when she decided to focus on national politics with the backing of Herrerismo. The economist reaffirmed this Thursday in Durazno her continuity at the head of the White Department, although in the structure of local leaders voices are added that ask to define the strategy electoral strategy in the country’s most populous bastion.
The Por La Patria sector of Senator Jorge Gandini was left alone in his claim to renew the leadership of the Departmentalwho in his opinion had been “headless” by Raffo’s incursions beyond Montevideo.
‘The plan was’Let’s empower Laura Raffo’. Let’s do a five-year job behind her and hope that the colorados put up a candidate, the Cabildo another and we go after a motto all together,’ “Gandini had stated in March on Diamante FM, while his deputy Álvaro Viviano considered on Twitter that , Beyond the “legitimate” aspirations of the economist, the organ had remained “headless” and added: “Let another leadership come”.
Raffo answered this Thursday in a tour of Durazno, when he told Telemundo: “If each one of the leaders of the National Party had to resign from their posts for listening to the people, which is our job, it would be illogical”.
Today the leaders of the 71, knowing that, by way of facts, Raffo will step aside from the Departmental the day his candidacy is made official.
Deputy Pedro Jisdonian, from Álvaro Delgado’s sector – who is on his way to becoming the opponent in the white internal team – claimed that “the Department is a very important body for political work in Montevideo,” and that the new national projection of the former candidate “deserves that there is at least a new meeting to evaluate how it continues” and “if we are willing to maintain the current structure”.
Leonardo Carreno
Laura Raffo had a high profile during the negotiations for the IDB loan
Jisdonian, who is one of the vice presidents of the Department, did not agree with the position of his co-religionist regarding the body being “headless”, although he recalled that “there have been no meetings for a long time and it is important to have a meeting to find out how continue,” he told The Observer.
His mayor on the capital’s Departmental Board, Diego Rodríguez, shared that the whites in Montevideo “need to rethink where they have to go.” “Laura’s aspirations are legitimate, but obviously we have to see from here on out how it is framed towards the departmental ones, because otherwise we went out to look for a candidate for Montevideo at the last moment and it is not given the priority it deserves. It is time that the Party looks more to the capital,” he said.
“We have to meet again and talk about how we are going to continue, consult the president (of the Department) what her vision of the issue is,” said deputy Gabriel Gianoli, from Espacio 40, whose reference is Javier García. “We will have to see what decision Laura makes, if she will continue, that as long as she is a candidate she will have a lot of homework. These things must be resolved in the corresponding bodies, and if they have a proposal, not do it in the press, “he questioned.
Some leaders do raise in a low voice the infrequency with which the Departmental meets with Raffo at the head, who at other times of the period maintained a high profile in the capital, as it was during the negotiations for the IDB loan for cleaning and sanitation intended by the administration of Carolina Cosse. The leader aligned the bench in its refusal to borrow and was the most visible face of the opposition, although at the departmental level she failed to consolidate work as a coalition.
“Perhaps we have had few meetings, and it is everyone’s responsibility to improve the frequency,” said Deputy Gianoli. The Departmental met for the last time at the end of February, to plan the year.
Until mid-2021 – Raffo took office in December 2020 – the economist tried to meet every week with councilors, councilors and mayors, although starting this year she began to build a “national movement” that led her to visit other departments and probe the support of groups. “Yes, I am dedicating myself to national politics,” she said April 15 during a tour of Rivera.
The white mayors Matilde Antía (Municipality CH) and Juan Pedro López (Municipality F), however, claim their willingness to advise on various issues and establish links with other authorities in the government.
Herrerista deputy: “Nobody asked Gandini to resign” from the Board of Directors
Herrerista deputy Juan Martín Rodríguez, one of the first to install Raffo’s name on the national agenda in the middle of last year, defended the role of the economist in the White Department: “Everything has its origin in an expression of my dear friend Viviano, and I am one of those who only praise my colleagues in public. Among the good people we are, things have to be discussed personally, not by the press,” he told The Observer.
Rodríguez maintained that “Laura was elected president of the Department by the party sovereign, the Departmental Convention, so publicly demanding that you renounce a political space where the one who anointed you is a party sovereign is still an attempt to amend the plan to the highest sovereign body of Montevideo”. The leader recalled that none of the presidents of the Honorable Directorate of the Party who were later candidates, such as Luis Lacalle Herrera, Jorge Larrañaga and Alberto Volonté, resigned until their candidacy was made official.
“If colleagues of the stature I named were not required, that Raffo be claimed seems excessive to me,” he declared, and reproached: “Jorge Gandini has said that he will analyze if they ask him to be a candidate. He is a member of the Board of Directors and no one asked him or is going to ask him to resign for that reason. Neither does Álvaro Delgado, a great colleague who is part of the menu. Being merciless with Laura in the claim when other colleagues in perhaps similar situations, seems a bit unreasonable to me“, he concluded.
