Bingology - The Blog of Aaron 'BingoBoingo' Rogier

Today Airstrip One's government sponsored media empire published a preview of the Uruguayan election. Given the time sensistive journalistic interest of making the world a better place by highlighting bad behavior, I have been compelled to annotate it as Qntra's Editor in Chief:

Uruguay election: Rising crime top concern for voters

Voters in Uruguay are going to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president,¹ with rising crime a leading concern.

Outgoing President Tabaré Vázquez of the left-wing Broad Front coalition will not be running, as presidents are prohibited from serving consecutive terms.²

A referendum on tougher security measures will be held at the same time.³

Its backers want to create a military-style National Guard.⁴

No presidential candidate supports the proposals linked to the referendum⁵ and human rights groups have also raised concerns.⁶

However, a recent survey by polling organisation Cifra indicates it currently has 53% support. It needs 50% or more to pass.⁷

In the presidential race, candidates must also receive at least 50% of the vote to avoid a run-off on 24 November.

All seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate will also be decided in the election.⁸

What's the current situation?

The Broad Front coalition has governed Uruguay since 2005.

However, President Vázquez's approval rating has slumped to under 30%, according to recent surveys, as opposed to 61% at the end of his 2005-2010 term, when he was the country's first leftist leader.⁹

The economy and unemployment are a major concern for voters, with only 22% of citizens rating the economy as good, according to Cifra.¹⁰

However, crime is dominating much of the debate.

The homicide rate increased by 46% last year, reaching 11.8 per 100,000 people.¹¹

Who is running for president?

Daniel Martínez, Broad Front

• Ex-mayor of Montevideo and former minister of industry, energy and mining¹²
• Polling between 33% and 41%¹³
• As a former socialist activist and a pro-business engineer, he is seen as having a wide appeal¹⁴
• Promises more surveillance cameras and community policing to tackle crime¹⁵

Luis Lacalle Pou, National Party

• Came second in 2014 election, and has been a member of Congress since 1999, when he was 26 years old¹⁶
• Polling between 22% and 27%¹⁷
• Conservative and very pro-business¹⁸
• Wants to put more police on the street, but also wants to tackle the high cost of living through austerity measures¹⁹

Ernesto Talvi, Colorado Party

• Chicago-educated economist, the son of immigrants from Macedonia and Cuba²⁰
• Polling between 10% and 16%²¹
• Has focused his campaign on education, aiming to create 136 public high schools in deprived neighbourhoods²²
• Has called for a less heavy-handed approach to crime and rehabilitation programmes for prisoners²³

Guido Manini Ríos, Open Cabildo²⁴

• Right-wing general²⁵
• Polling at 10% to 12% with this newly formed party²⁶
• Running on a socially conservative, law-and-order platform²⁷
• Has been compared to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro²⁸

The prediction

Based on current polling, it is likely to go to a run-off between Mr Martínez and Mr Lacalle Pou.²⁹

The other big question

The criminal reform referendum is pegged to the Living Without Fear campaign, promoted by Senator Jorge Larrañaga,³⁰ a member of the National Party. However many members of the party have not backed the idea, denouncing it as reactionary.³¹

Alongside creating the controversial national guard, the reform seeks to permit night raids³² and make some prison sentences more severe.

Some have blamed social exclusion for the rise in violent crime,³³ while others have linked it to gangs and cross-border trafficking.³⁴

I hope this was sufficiently informative. Why should the popular international, state owned outlets do things like consult subject matter experts on the ground? Why should they do anything but crib other sloppy made for adsense copy? There is a reason popular use of "BBC" rarely refers to British Broadcasting Corporation anymore, and the reason is not African sexual prowess.

1. Not at all. They buried the lead. The voters of Uruguay are going to the polls to avoid being fined. As a secondary consideration they are determining the composition of the legislature. The probability they choose the President of the Republic today is slim. There will almost certainly be a November 27th runoff. [↩]
2. Even if he was allowed this year he has become a widower and been diagnosed with lung cancer. [↩]
3. Not quite. It is a referendum on amending the constitution to create grounds to enact some "tougher" measures while mandating the creation of a small 2,000 head gendarmie. There's actually already a similar organ locally referred to as the Republicana, "Fuerzas Policías Especiales" per the decals on their vehicles. [↩]
4. Not particularly. The big concern on the ground is they don't the sorta dumbly violent criminals which have emerged since the Penal Code was revamped by the Fat Forehead party. Shit like killing 15 year old females and burning payment desk clerks after getting cash in their holdups. The details beyond that vary substantially depending on who you ask. [↩]
5. This is true for the reason that they all have their own more specific plans that don't require amending the consitution. [↩]
6. This same groups loved the clumsy marijuana legalization which makes getting weed more a pain in the ass for locals while folks in the drug business have had rapidly shift their operations to cocaine and their organizational cultures to handle moving cocaine. [↩]
7. They suck at picking surveys and cherry picked the one that makes the referendum seem closer. It's polled all over the high 50's into the 60's. Then again after the party internals, the local polling organizations seem to offer poor resolution. [↩]
8. Notice how they not only buried the lead by flipped the questions to bury the one most relevant to the day's questions. [↩]
9. He was not. His was the first Fat Forehead leader. José Batlle y Ordóñez was the first socialist left president of Uruguay in 1903. Or are salary and wage councils, central economic planning, and state monopolies not Left or Socialist anymore. What the fuck. As a matter of fact Idi Amin did conquer the British Empire in 1977, held the legitimate title of King of Scotland, because it is clear the pasty ass royals abdicated long ago. The man simply claimed a vacant position. [↩]
10. This figure corresponds to the portion of the population either directly or indirectly employed in relatively lucrative by local standards government sinecures. [↩]
11. Largely related to internal fights among organizations in the drug trade forced to shift to cocaine, clumsily executed robberies and hold ups, and domestic disputes, frequently among immigrant couples, gone terminal. [↩]
12. I.e. The insider that won a lethargicly contested party internal race. [↩]
13. That spread! [↩]
14. He has a narrow appeal. Because the locals vote with lists he automatically gets votes when members of the different Fat Forehead factions vote their own sector for the legislator. Also no mention of his running mate, very unpopular inside and outside the Broad Front. [↩]
15. This is an incredibly charitable and abridged reading of his proposals. [↩]
16. No mention of his fist fight in the Palacio Legislativo? [↩]
17. It's becoming clear they are using different polls and time spans to pick these ranges. If Uruguay had a variant of the electoral college system where votes were distributed to departments by the value they generated in terms of the country's exports, he would be set for a landslide in this field of candiates and platforms. [↩]
18. He's the get government the fuck out of the way candidate. Condensed to three words each, his positions on social issues are indistringuishable from Pepe Mujica.
    • Marijuana is fine
    • Gays are fine
    • Etc

    The difference is in the proposed execution. "Fuck it, Marijuana is fine" versus "Marijuana is fine but we gotta bury it in rules!" [↩]

19. This is an odd way of saying he wants to balance the budget by reducing the number of sinecures and overlapping giveaway programs while reducing costs in the country by removing a portion of the 15 years of accumulated scar tissue accreted by the activity of legislating. [↩]
20. This means he's toxic to his own Party's hsitorical base. Also, why omit his recent positions serving in organizations where helped to shape policy in the Broad Front government? [↩]
21. They notably cut out the brief time a couple polls had him neck and neck with Luis, back when the convential wisdom was he'd have substantial cross over appeal to Frentistas. Nevermind the Fentistas are more motivated to vote by their sector than their headliner. [↩]
22. Briefly. His collapse began when his proposal to mortgage Uruguay to New York in the Argentine fashion took over his conversation though it was always present in his campaign. In recent weeks he spent some time on tilt before many of his TV spots starting pushing his campaign as a Senatorial one. [↩]
23. Has not in my reading been consistent on the crime issue, though he has generally indeed advanced this position which also happens to be the position of the Frentist candidate. They both want more cameras and more "rehabilitation", whatever the hell that means. [↩]
24. Oh, the foreign press once again has no problem translating "Abierto" to "Open" while failing to translate "Cabildo" to "Council" though they did English grammar the noun/adjective relation. Why the fuck does this lazy half translation of labels persist? [↩]
25. Authoritarian left-wing general. Long standing family ties to socialist sectors of the Colorado Party and an economic platform that overlaps substantially with Mujica's "Espacio 609" while also getting to his former position as Commander in Chief through having apparently been Mujica's boy in the armed forces. [↩]
26. Here they change it up and cherry pick to give him a very narrow spread! He's gone far higher in polls this month with the trend seeming to suggest he commands a larger portion of the remains of the Colorado Party than the Colorado candidate has managed to capture. [↩]
27. Only because he hasn't had to hammer his substantially similar to Mujica economic platform in his campaign. [↩]
28. By the local Frentistas who will happily lable other sectors of their own coalition "fachos" despite the very different economic programs Manini and Bolsonaro advance. With Manini's Senate seat seeming to be in the bag, he is likely to caucus with the Frente on economic matters. [↩]
29. It is almost certain. Likely my ass, in that case it is likely to rain at least once in Montevideo before Christmas while the sky at present has strong tells for a downpour beginning a few hours after sunset. [↩]
30. Larrañaga leads a section of the National Party calling itself Wilsonismo. It appears many confusedly hold the idea Wilsonismo refers to former US President Woodrow Wilson instead of the late local Nationalist leader Wilson Ferreira Aldunate for whom it is actually named. Literacy is a thing [↩]
31. Thinking folk hate it because a constitutional amendment is a clumsy solution. [↩]
32. It turned out that these have actually been happening under the current left government. They ignore the consitutional and legal protections which declare a man's home is his castle and may not be violated at night by... declaring their targets businesses instead of homes! [↩]
33. Amazing how actual social inclusion has declined despite the GINI wank. [↩]
34. Sucks to cut the folks who were in the marijuana business out of the marijuana business and forcing their move into Andean cocaine. [↩]

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 27th, 2019 at 6:26 p.m. and is filed under Exercises, Midwestern Rube, Peso Watch, PolitiX, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.