Rafael Addiego Bruno

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Rafael Addiego Bruno (1923-) is a Uruguayan jurist and political figure. He was President of Uruguay February - March 1985 as an interim measure, following the resignation, and accession to office, respectively, of Presidents Gregorio Alvarez and Julio María Sanguinetti.

Addiego was President of the Supreme Court when the sitting President, General Gregorio Alvarez, who did not look favourably on the candidacy of the Colorado Party's Sanguinetti and his subsequent election to the Presidency in November 1984, opted under pressure to resign in February, 1985.

By 1985, there had been increasing divisions among members of the National Security Council, which had originally sponsored Alvarez's appointment to the Presidency in 1981. In addition, Sanguinetti and his Colorado Party supporters felt they had strong reasons to seek to discredit Alvarez in favour of their candidate. For both the (relatively) moderate members of the National Security Council and for Sanguinetti and his supporters, a mutually acceptable transitional figure was sought.

Thus it was Addiego who briefly came to serve out the remainder of Alvarez's expected term of office until President-elect Sanguinetti was sworn in at the beginning of March 1985.

Defenders of the political arrangement whereby Addiego became President were able to point out that it enabled Sanguinetti to receive the transfer of office from a civilian (Alvarez being a General). Sceptics were able to recall that since Juan María Bordaberry's 1973 coup, which had led to the increased involvement of the Uruguayan military in the government, various of the 'Military Government' Presidents - Bordaberry, Demicheli and Méndez, were in fact civilians, and it had been the military-backed National Security Council in any case which had cooperated with the November 1984 Presidential elections.

From whatever perspective, however, the reasons which led to Addiego's brief period of Presidential office exemplify something of the nature and even ambiguities underlying the transition to Sanguinetti's presidency.