Brazil on Thursday handed over the six-month rotating presidency of the Mercosur trade bloc (Southern Common Market) to Paraguay. During a ceremony at the bloc's 55th summit in Bento Goncalves, Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro expressed confidence in his Paraguayan counterpart Mario Abdo Benitez and his leadership skills.
Mercosur faces a tense future, the president-elect of Uruguay said on Monday, referring to a diplomatic spat between regional heavyweight economies Brazil and Argentina. Brazil’s right-wing leader Jair Bolsonaro and Argentina’s incoming leader, left-leaning Peronist Alberto Fernandez, have sparred openly.
Luis Lacalle Pou of the center-right National Party won Uruguay’s presidency after his rival conceded four days after a runoff election. A second vote count by the country's Electoral Court confirmed and widened the neck to neck difference between the president elect and the incumbent candidate
Uruguay Sunday's presidential runoff results have been so tight that the Electoral Court will only make a definitive announcement sometime late this week after it has completed counting all votes, including some 34.000, classified as “observed”. This is because the difference between the two candidates is some 29.000 votes.
This Sunday 2.7 million Uruguayans will cast their ballots in the presidential runoff, which according to all opinion poll forecasts, will have Luis Lacalle Pou, the leader of an opposition multicolor alliance as head of the Executive next March, but equally significant, power switching, it will mark the end of fifteen years of almost undisputed predominance of a catch-all coalition, Broad Front, which ruled South America's smallest country for three consecutive five-year mandates.
After a long election campaign, Uruguayans live the last days before the second round of the presidential elections, which will take place on Sunday, November 24. The latest polls before the ballotage positions the nationalist Luis Lacalle Pou as the next president of the country, breaking the hegemony of the left that the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) imposed in the last 15 years.
In a tense debate a week and little of the second round of the presidential election in Uruguay, on Wednesday night the candidates offered profound differences both in terms of economy, public security and the country's positioning in foreign policy mentioning the dictatorship of Venezuela.
Winds of change have swept in Uruguay. After fifteen years in office, and enjoying an absolute legislative majority, the Broad Front could lose control of the Executive on 24 November, when a runoff is scheduled among the two most voted candidates this Sunday.
Uruguayans head to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president, 30 senators and 99 Lower House members. If none of the eleven presidential candidates manages 50% of cast votes plus one on 27 October, a runoff between the two hopefuls with most support is scheduled for 24 November.
On Sunday, October 27, in Uruguay, a new president, and Parliament will be elected. According to pollsters, the same parties as in 2014, the official Frente Amplio (FA, Broad Front) and the conservative National Party, will go on second ballotage in November. However, the novelty is that the Legislature will be made up of a minimum of six parties (a historical record) and a maximum of nine.