• Elections: Lacalle Pou or the patience of the surfer until confirming that he is the president of Uruguay
  • Results: Night of uncertainty in Uruguay with a narrow advantage of the center right
  • South America.Decisive elections in Uruguay, one more card in the South American domino

There are few votes that Uruguay has in suspense, but they are enough, or at least sufficient. Beating the rival by 28,666 votes in a country in which 2.7 million people vote implies a difference of 1.2 percent. Four years ago, on the other side of the Río de la Plata, Mauricio Macri won by two percent, and no one made him wait for days until he confirmed that he was the new president. This is not the case with Luis Lacalle Pou, who must arm himself with patience until Thursday or Friday, when the Electoral Court reviewed the 35,229 votes observed and says what everyone knows: the right-wing center of the National Party returns to power and the left-wing coalition Broad returns to the opposition after 15 years in the Executive Tower, the seat of the Government in Montevideo.

"We are going to live an unprecedented week. Prudence and patience must be taken to a higher degree. If we knew how to lose, above all we have to know how to win," said Lacalle Pou in an early Monday morning in which not a few feared it would break. . The emotion and the hoarse voice after weeks of campaign were already a burden on their backs, but the anguished feeling of knowing the next president of Uruguay and not being able to say it almost exceeds it. The newspaper 'El Observador' summed it up on the front page today: "He won and they don't recognize him."

Having been defeated in the second round five years ago by Tabaré Vázquez, in addition to being the son of president and great-grandson of a consular figure in the country's political history, perhaps helped Lacalle Pou, 46, to exhibit on the night of the Sunday a balance nothing simple. After four hours of counting votes in the smallest country in South America, the result was 49.7 percent for the National Party and its allies (a coalition of liberals, social democrats and rightists) against 48.5 of Daniel Martínez, the Left coalition candidate Frente Amplio.

Throughout the night, the Uruguayan media were extremely cautious, and despite the fact that the scrutiny gave the opposition a very narrow, but consistent advantage, no one dared to say that Lacalle Pou was the winner. Much depended, then, on the attitude taken by Martinez, former mayor of Montevideo and beaten by own and others during a campaign in which he had to defend and grow the advantage of 38 to 29 percent with which he won in the first round. Emboldened by a remarkably better result than what the polls predicted, Martinez took the stage in the center of the Uruguayan capital by jumping and singing. So much was the euphoria, that the winner looked like him. The former mayor of Montevideo, 62, appealed to the poetic epic: "They tried to bury us, what they did not know is that we are seeds! Now to return home with a heart full of joy and wait for the countdown to end" . His campaign manager, Yamandú Orsi, would later say that "the numbers are very likely" that Lacalle Pou is the president as of March 1. But Martínez had already managed to install a different story: although he finally lost, he did not lose.

Without a call from the loser to the winner or recognition of his narrow triumph, but triumph at last, Lacalle Pou went out on stage. With the passing of the hours everyone calmed down: according to the consultant Enia, Martinez would need to keep 91 percent of the "votes observed" to overcome Lacalle Pou. In October, the 'front-wing' candidate only obtained 27 percent of those votes. And Lacalle Pou will also add votes in that final scrutiny that will begin tomorrow Tuesday and will not extend beyond Friday.

What happens in Uruguay is being followed with attention not only on the other side of the Rio de la Plata, where the Peronist Alberto Fernández prepares to take office on December 10, but throughout the rest of a Latin America in a state of political boiling as it was years ago it was not lived.

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  • Mauricio Macri
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