Former President Julio María Sanguinetti arrived a few minutes after noon at the atrium of the Montevideo City Hall to vote in the referendum on the 135 articles of the LUC.
He walked through the right sector of the closed space, arrived at his circuit, 110, waited for another citizen to vote, voted, took off the Colorado Party mask and told the media present that he felt “like (Luis) Suárez at the Centenario (Stadium),” because “it is the last season” that he lives “as a protagonist.”
“Now an intern, a national and others will come, which I will accompany, but now I will not be in the leading role”added who was president of the Republic from 1985 to 1990 and from 1995 to 2000.
Since the Yes reached the 700 thousand signatures necessary to enable the referendum, Sanguinetti was an active part of the campaign. February 6 was the main speaker of the Colorado Party in Atlántidaand in the middle of the rain he assured the people present that his political force it is “democracy”, because, among other reasons, “they do not applaud dictatorships”. He was also in one of the last acts of the coalition in Las Piedras, where he assured that in a referendum it was necessary to choose “between hope and resignation”.
This Sunday, after casting his vote, he indicated that the government ha “going through a pandemic, with an economic and social crisis throughout the world”, and has done “with the relative success that always involves facing critical situations”.
third distance
Sanguinetti, 86, began his political career as a deputy in 1963, and from then on he was always connected in one way or another to national politics. In addition to being president, he was Minister (Education and Industry) in the presidency of Pacheco Areco, senator and deputyand continue as General Secretary of the Colorado Partya position he held from 1983 to 1985, from 2004 to 2009, and which he has held since December 2019.
After a term as a senator from 2005 to 2010, the former president he moved away from active politics until in 2018 he decided to run again as a presidential candidate for the Colorado Partyin the midst of a departure from the then party leader Pedro Bordaberry, and a still incipient arrival of the economist Ernesto Talvi, who finally defeated him in the internal elections.
With Talvi’s departure from politics as soon as the new government began in 2020, Sanguinetti, an elected senator, took a leading role in the coalition as Colorado leader.
On October 20, 2020, however, the former president he retired as a parliamentarian the same day as former president José Mujica. “Because I feel an enormous duty towards my party and because I feel a deep conviction about the importance of political parties in democratic life”, he said that day.
Yet his leadership of the party to which he has been affiliated since 1960 did not diminish. Together with the president, Luis Lacalle Pou, they decided on the departure of Germán Cardoso as Minister of Tourism in August 2021, who resigned after meeting with Sanguinetti at his home in Punta Carretas. Also there, on August 24, the former president presented the new minister, Tabaré Viera, to the media.
“I would have participated more”
Sanguinetti was asked about Lacalle Pou’s participation in the campaign, and he replied: “Personally I believe that President Lacalle has intervened very little in the campaign, very little, I would have intervened more.”
For Sanguinetti, the president It has the right to speak out both for the laws it vetoes and for the defense of those it promotes.
The Colorado leader explained that this discussion took place within the framework of the reform of the 1934 Constitution, in which “it became clear” that “The president cannot participate in the electoral process, candidacies, lists, etc., but naturally he can defend his program and defend his actions.”
