Senate fired Topolansky: "From Tupamara legends to legends of popular support"

“For various reasons I could not adapt to working through Zoom,” he wrote in his resignation letter that was read before the Senate.

Topolansky did not participate in the session and recommended “not to do so much pamento” to his fellow benches, according to what Alejandro Sánchez revealed, who was the first to speak in the session. “For us it is not another day,” he assured.

Sánchez highlighted Topolansky’s role in the creation of the MPP, and his sun in social policy. She also valued that “she never left her neighborhood, Rincón del Cerro”, and that when the Broad Front was in power it was always “official squared”, as she said, Sánchez explained.

The senator also recalled that when she was captured for her role as a Tupamara in the period prior to the civic-military dictatorship (1973-1985), her captor told her that she was going to be sentenced for “30 years plus 15”, for which she was going to to be released in 2017 and “surely she was not going to arrive alive”. Topolansky, Sánchez said, told her that “she was going to arrive alive and she was going to be able to celebrate many things,” and remarked that in 2017 the emepepista wanted to leave Parliament, but she had to take the role of vice president instead of Raúl Sendic.

“Today he simply decided to change courts,” said the senator from the Front, adding that his militancy did not begin in Parliament, but “he left his mark.”

Front-Amplistan senator Lilián Kechichian considered Topolansky’s dismissal as “innovative.” Because of her performance in politics, Kechichian maintained that his resignation has repercussions on “all institutions.”

“I will always be eternally grateful to you for vindicating the Armenian people’s right to the truth about the genocide at the beginning of the century,” added the senator, part of the Armenian community. “Loyal, industrious and above all a political woman,” she added.

Sebastián da Silva, a nationalist senator, said that when he shared a legislature with Topolansky for the first time in the period 2000-2005, he began to see “the woman behind the Tupamara legend.”

The pro-government legislator said that on the day of the “rumor”, of the false general assault on the streets in the midst of the crisis that reached several media outlets, Parliament was closed and the cars were kept in the parking lot. At one point in the assembly, Da Silva asked Topolansky if everything that was being said was true and she told him to stay calm, that it was not true.

According to the nationalist senator, Topolansky was part of a generation that lost in the war –against the military prior to the dictatorship–, and won at the polls, in the Frente Amplio governments. “There was no honor left for that generation to reach,” he said, adding that the members of this group – Mujica, Bonomi, Topolansky, among others – went “from Tupamara legends to legends of popular support.”

Colorado senator Germán Coutinho described Topolansky as a “senatorial senator”, and assured that there was a “before and after” of her in Parliament. He valued her role as president of her “loyal, adjusted to the regulations” in the Senate from 2017 to 2020.

The senator and leader of the Cabildo Abierto Guido Manini Ríos highlighted the “conciliatory” and “negotiating” attitude of the senator from the Front.

The president of the Chamber of Senators, Beatriz Argimón, valued the political talks she had with Topolansky prior to voting for his resignation, and said that it is “see you later.”

After unanimously voting for his resignation, a minute of silence was held for the death of the Frente Amplio senator Eduardo Bonomi.

Topolansky, a member of the Popular Participation Movement (MPP), revealed this decision to his colleagues on the bench on February 8, in the midst of the discussion of the law that sought a solution for the members and officials of Casa de Galicia.

He alleged at that time that he had not been able to work as much as he would have wanted in this period of government due to the pandemic, and he bet on the generational change of the Broad Front. The legislator is 77 years old and her substitute in her position, Sabini, is 40 years old.

The wife of former President José Mujica began her career in the Legislative Palace in the period 2000-2005 as a deputy. In the first Frente Amplio government, from 2005 to 2010, she was a senator, as in the 2010-2015 period, in which she combined her tasks with the symbolic role of first lady.

In the 2015-2020 period, she began as a senator, but in September 2017 she replaced Raúl Sendic as vice president, for which she was president of the Chamber of Senators from that moment until the end of the period. In the current period of government she was elected for the fourth consecutive time as a senator.

“We know that we will continue to meet where you like the most: on the street and with people. As you have always taught us, with reason and heart,” says the MPP in a tweet that honors Topolansky.