The Popular Participation Movement (MPP) made official the presidential candidacy of the current mayor of Canelones, Yamandú Orsi. In the declaration of the plenary, which took place last weekend in Montevideo and brought the Congress that began months ago to an end, the sector of the broad front led by the former president Jose “Pepe” Mujica He promised to “build the victory of hope with Yamandú Orsi” ahead of the 2024 general elections.
“What we see hurts us”
“Today we face a great challenge, which is to remove this government in the 2024 national elections because what we see hurts us,” said Orsi in relation to Luis’ Executive Lacalle Forand I add: “You only need to walk the streets to see the people left behind”. For the mayor of Canelones, the current national government makes “the gurisada continue to leave and poverty and childhood are part of the same reality.”
Orsi explained that he decided to join the MPP because in that place “the veterans taught me that the important thing is to have a strategic vision, the importance of the productive sector, of rural areas and of each part of the country” and “I learned that when we commit ourselves to a cause we do it to the bone.” The politician said that while he was a member of the party he also learned “the sense of breadth, of how we should grow and Do not receive someone who approaches you with stone in hand“.
“Each one of us is going to have a role, and we are going to be where the Broad Front says. It will get there if we are all together, because that is what we are on the front. The referents are nothing without the peoplebecause if we don’t all go together, we fail,” said Orsi, who added: “We will get there with more ‘front’, with more ‘broad’. This implies strengthening the political force and expanding it, we must be clear about the diversity in the unit”.
Pepe and Lucía’s messages
In the same act of launching Orsi, the former senator and former vice president of Uruguay, Lucia Topolansky, praised the figure of the mayor of Canelones and recognized that he could have been a good candidate in the previous elections. Topolansky defined it as a “very valuable militant” who has a good connection with people.
For his part, Pepe Mujica I call “fight for this comrade to be president, but if it is not your turn we will put your shoulder to what society and the people of the Front decide”. The former Uruguayan president said that “we must not confuse our will with what our people want, because history is not defined by the caciques but by the size of the Indian line, no cause without people behind will materialize”.
“I don’t feel like dying, but I can do it at any time because there is a bar that is left behind to bank,” said Mujica, who highlighted among the priorities of a potential Broad Front government: “We have to play in the interior, because if we do not industrialize it, this country will not grow”.
Mujica has already expressed his support for Orsi on several occasions. In an interview with the newspaper The Observer In November 2022, the historic leader of the MPP had declared: “I believe that Orsi goes beyond the MPP, he has been in the Canelones mayorship for many years and has his own personality. The MPP will support him, but Orsi is beyond of the MPP. It is more open, it has less brick”.
Finally, the former president of the single trade union center of Uruguay (PIT-CNT), Fernando Pereirasaid “Uruguay’s only hope is the Broad Front”. The current president of the main opposition party referred to the 2024 elections and assured that the militants will support whoever wins the primaries “in single file.”
“The right believes that we are going to have big problems with the candidacies, but we are on the way to the fact that in the second part of the year the entire Broad Front comes out to present the program and in December the candidate will be chosen and behind the one who wins, in a row India, the entire Broad Front, let there be no doubt,” stated Pereira, who added, addressing the Lacalle Pou government: “Hope in Uruguay is called the Broad Front, no matter how much it bothers them and they seek disqualification”.
In the latest survey by the consulting firm Cifra, Orsi was the most voted among the potential candidates for the presidency of Uruguay. The current mayor of Canelones accumulated 20 percent favoritismquite far from second place: the mayor of Montevideo, Caroline Cosseand the Secretary of the Presidency, Alvaro Delgadoboth with a nine percentaccording to The Observer. In any case, the vast majority of the population (37 percent) responded that they had not yet defined their vote.