Uruguay votes a referendum that can change the history of Lacalle Pou

Some 2.7 million citizens are called to vote in the 7,060 voting centers that opened their doors this Sunday in Uruguay to decide whether or not to repeal 135 of the 476 articles of the Law of Urgent Consideration (LUC), a star project of the Executive of Luis Lacalle Pou.

The tables for the elections will be open, according to the information provided by the Electoral Court, from 8:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. this Sunday.

The campaign for these elections, in which Uruguayans support or not the use of Law 19,889, enacted in July 2020 -barely three months after the start of Lacalle Pou’s term (2020-2025)-, has been developed in a tone of rejection or support for the management of the Executive, made up of a coalition of five parties.

The president himself, at the press conference held this Wednesday at the Executive Tower (seat of government) to defend his project, acknowledged that “it is not the same” to govern with that article than without it, although he confessed that if the option of the ‘No’, defended by the ruling party, is not “to celebrate” either.

The ‘Yes’ is promoted by a series of social and political organizations, including the trade union center, the PIT-CNT, and the Broad Front, a leftist coalition that governed Uruguay between 2005 and 2020 and today is the main force of the opposition, who consider that these articles violate important rights of the Uruguayan population.

With that idea, they began a campaign to collect signatures in 2021 which, last December, was confirmed to have exceeded the necessary figure (671,544 signatures, 25% of the electoral roll) for the Electoral Court to enable the holding of the referendum.

The president himself, at the press conference held this Wednesday at the Executive Tower (seat of government) to defend his project, acknowledged that “it is not the same” to govern with that article than without it, although he confessed that if the option of the ‘No’, defended by the ruling party, is not “to celebrate” either.