According to Pereira, the Frente Amplio is starting to build the launching platform for 2024, the date of the upcoming presidential elections in Uruguay.
 Photo: UY Press

By Roberto Morejón 

The Frente Amplio, Uruguay's most important opposition formation, continues its phase of self-analysis and renewal after the setback in the 2019 elections, and as part of its internal dynamics appointed a union leader in the role of president-elect.

Fernando Pereira, who until the middle of the current year headed the struggling union central PIT-CNT, is the new leader of the coalition that in its trajectory, of more than half a century, has had among its leading figures emblematic militants, such as Líber Seregni and Tabaré Vázquez.

The Frente Amplio, in government for 15 years, was NOT able to continue in the endeavor due to the electoral balance, but nobody denies its service record in favor of Uruguayans, including procedures to make the health system more accessible.

During the mandate of the neoliberal Luis Lacalle Pou, it maintained a critical position and among its bases there were many effective participants in the campaign to collect signatures against the Law of Urgent Consideration, considered harmful to social and economic rights.

Fernando Pereira, now president elect of the Frente Amplio, was one of the referents of the collection of signatures against the main law of the right-wing executive.

The former trade union leader will assume the effective leadership of the political party next February, but he has already shown his willingness to move towards parity in leadership.

According to the labor activist, the Frente Amplio is starting to build the launching platform for 2024, date of the upcoming presidential elections, when his party will once again be an alternative, according to his words.

With Pereira's guidance, the opposition conglomerate will have to continue what many qualify as generational renewal, a management which, in his criteria, is NOT only a matter of age, and in favor of unity without exclusions.

All this in a year in which the Central PIT-CNT coordinated a general strike to demand employment and better wages, in view of the abrupt fall in purchasing power.

Carried out in September, the work stoppage also gave rise to demands for decent health care and housing, defense of state enterprises and rejection of increases in public rates. 

These are demands to which the Frente Amplio is receptive.