1 December 2009 / REUTERS, MONTEVIDEO
A blunt-talking former guerrilla fighter won Uruguay’s presidential election on Sunday, promising to leave behind his radical past and take a moderate path in one of Latin America’s most stable countries.
Jose Mujica, a 74-year-old ex-senator, claimed victory after his rival, conservative former President Luis Lacalle, conceded the race with pollsters’ projections showing Mujica ahead with around 51 percent of the vote. Mujica is expected to maintain the investor-friendly policies of popular outgoing President Tabare Vazquez, who is from the same leftist coalition and has overseen strong economic growth. “Thank you, Tabare,” Mujica said, addressing thousands of chanting supporters. “We have won because of your government and we will continue it.” The president-elect said he aims to emulate Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Latin America’s leading moderate leftist, and dismissed critics who warned he may align Uruguay with the region’s hard-line left led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The vote crowned Mujica’s decades-long transformation from a militant who waged an armed revolt against Uruguay’s right-wing government in the 1960s and 1970s into one of the country’s most popular politicians.
