Former union leader to preside over Uruguay’s leftist Frente Amplio coalition

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Former union leader Fernando Pereira was officially appointed Thursday president-elect of the Frente Amplio (FA). This leftist coalition governed Uruguay between 2005 and 2020 and today is the main force of the national opposition.

In a public appearance at the leftist formation headquarters, the FA coordinator, Ricardo Ehrlich, announced the former president of the PIT-CNT until mid-2021, the Uruguayan trade union center, as the next leader of the coalition.

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Pereira will assume the Presidency during the Plenary of the formation, which will take place on February 5, 2022, when the formation turns 51 years old after it could not celebrate its half-century with big celebrations due to the pandemic.

The former union leader competed in the internal elections of December 5 with Gonzalo Civila, current deputy, and Ivonne Passada, senator, between 2015 and 2020.

According to the figures offered by Ehrlich, 67.09% of the votes counted so far are for Pereira against 10% for Civila and 5.5 % for Passada, so the difference in favor of the former president of the PIT-CNT allowed his appointment.

During his speech, Pereira expressed his commitment to “move towards parity” and announced the name of his vice-president as of February, Verónica Piñeyro, an expert in environmental issues within the FA.

“There can be no excuse for not being able to build it. We will find the mechanism. Today parity is not a political necessity; it is a moral necessity of our political force,” she said.

Pereira, who takes over the Presidency of the formation from Javier Miranda, who resigned last August, stressed that the Frente Amplio begins to “build the launching platform for 2024”, alluding to the next presidential elections in which, he said, his formation will again be “alternative” for the head of state.

The FA lost the 2019 elections, in which the center-right Luis Lacalle Pou won, at the head of a five-party coalition, over the then leftist candidate, Daniel Martínez, which meant losing power after 15 consecutive years, with two terms of Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010 and 2015-2020) and one of José Mujica (2010-2015).

Pereira had words of remembrance for Vázquez, whose death was a year ago on the 6th, and added that his formation not only will not give up – alluding to the text “No te rindas”, declaimed by the former president hours before imposing the presidential sash to Lacalle Pou – but will build “a new majority”.

“I may fail, but I will work tirelessly for a better Frente Amplio”, he concluded.

During the 50-year history of the FA, it has been presided over by different personalities, among them Vázquez, who led the formation from 1996 to 1998 and from 1999 to 2004.

Also presiding over the Frente Amplio were Líber Seregni (1971-1994), Jorge Brovetto (2004-2012), Mónica Xavier (2012-2015) and Javier Miranda (2016-2021).