Julio María Sanguinetti

Julio María Sanguinetti Coirolo (b. 6 January 1936, Montevideo, Uruguay) is a Uruguayan politician, lawyer and journalist, as well as a former President of Uruguay (from March 1985 until March 1990, and, again, from March 1995 until March 2000) for the Partido Colorado.

A lawyer and journalist by profession, he was born into a middle-class family of Italian origin. He studied Law and Social Sciences at the University of Montevideo. He received his law degree in 1961, and later combined his legal practice with work as a journalist. He had already been writing for the press, first in the weekly Canelones and later, since 1955, as a columnist for Acción, a newspaper established by the then-President, Luis Batlle, for which he covered events such as the Cuban Revolution (1959) and carried on until the 1970s.

Both means of communication were connected to the Colorado Political Party (Partido Colorado - PC), the historical liberal grouping where progressive and conservative sensitivities shared ground (a mixture of doctrines and styles that was frequently an obstacle to classifying it according to ideology) and which had as its rival the experienced National Party (PN) or Blancos ("Whites"), creating a 2-party system that dominated Uruguayan politics during its history, although on most occasions the governing force was the PC.

Early Biography

In 1963, when he was 27 years old, Sanguinetti became a member of the national parliament representing part of Montevideo for the Partido Colorado (PC). In 1964 he was a member of the Uruguayan delegation that participated in the establishment of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva.

In 1966 he served as a member of the drafting group and informer on Constitutional Reform and from 1967 he was a member of the advisory group of Colorado President Jorge Pacheco on affairs related to the Organization of American States (OEA). Later on, in 1969, Pacheco appointed him as Minister for Industry and Commerce, a position which he occupied until 1971, when he was appointed Head of the Uruguayan Trade Mission to the USSR. He also became Deputy Editor of Acción.

In March 1972, the new President, also from the PC Party, Juan María Bordaberry, brought him to the government once again as Minister for Education and Culture. That same year, Sanguinetti was a founding member of the National Commission for the Historical, Artistic and Cultural Heritage of the Nation.

Civilian-military administration 1973-1985

The breach of the constitutional order by the Armed Forces in June 1973 deprived him of his positions in the Government and in the House of Representatives, where he had renewed his seat once again in 1971, as well as his position as Deputy Editor of Acción Newspaper - which was closed down - and President of the National Council of Visual Arts, to which he had been appointed in 1967. In 1976 he was prohibited from undertaking any political activity.

During the following years, Sanguinetti worked as a journalist, working from a viewpoint that was critical of the de facto Government, in El Día Newspaper (1973–1981), Visión Newspaper (since 1974, as an opinion columnist, a collaboration which he has continued up until today), and in the weekly publication Correo de los Viernes (established by him in 1981 and edited until 1984), as well as in the promotion of cultural and sports activities as the President of the Regional UNESCO Centre for the promotion of books in South America (1975–1984) and Vice-President of the popular Peñarol Football Club.

Following the rejection of the constitutional project on 30 November 1980 and having had his political rights restored on 29 June 1981, Sanguinetti headed the PC delegation in the political party negotiations with the army in order to allow a peaceful and ordered transition to democracy. The negotiations ended with the signing of the Naval Club Agreement on 3 August 1984. In 1983 he was elected Secretary General of the Executive Committee of PC and in August 1984 he obtained the majority nomination for the presidential elections which were to be held later that year, putting an end to 12 years of dictatorship.

President of Uruguay 1985-1990 and 1995-2000

On 25 November 1984, Sanguinetti won 31.2% of the votes, defeating the best PN candidate, Alberto Zumarán; thus on 1 March 1985 he was sworn in as president with a 5-year term substituting the temporary president, Rafael Addiego, who had in turn substituted the military president, Gregorio Álvarez, on the previous 12 February. The ceremony was attended by 72 foreign representatives as an expression of support from the international community towards that new era in Uruguayan politics. (At the time, Sanguinetti had been unwilling to participate in an office-conferring ceremony together with Álvarez, and thus the interim arrangement with Addiego was worked out with the agreement of the parties concerned, but in later years Álvarez found an unlikely defender in Sanguinetti, who argued that Álvarez's legal troubles since the coming of the Broad Front government in 2005 were unnecessarily one-sided, since known former Tupamaro insurgents were being ignored by Uruguayan justice.)

Considered at the time a progressive politician in political questions and more conservative in economic questions, Sanguinetti managed to rehabilitate the image of a party that included a great variety of ideological diversity, the more conservative sectors of which had supported the coup d'état in 1973. He immediately lifted the ban on political parties and leaders that had actively opposed the dictatorship and signed an amnesty for political prisoners.

With respect to foreign relations, Sanguinetti re-launched relations with Spain and re-established contacts with communist countries. In the nearer geographic arena, on 26 May 1987, and as a colophon to several preparatory meetings, he signed the Montevideo Agreement with his colleague, Raúl Alfonsín. This agreement was decisive in giving an impulse to regional economic integration according to the objectives outlined in the South American Integration Association (ALADI).

Alfonsín had already been negotiating an ambitious agreement to dismantle tariffs in bilateral trade with the Brazilian José Sarney; now, Sanguinetti was included in an open field project that adopted a three-country shape and that gained impulse from the summit of the three presidents which the Uruguayan had organized in Colonia on 6 February 1988. With the inclusion of Paraguay, all this work led to the creation of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) in 1991.

In the economic area, Sanguinetti's Government had the reduction of the USD $510,000,000 million foreign debt as one of its most important objectives. This is an enormous figure which is close to the level of national production. Likewise, Sanguinetti was an active member of the Support Group (Uruguay, Peru, Brazil and Argentina) of the Contadora Group (Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama), an informal consultative forum dedicated to exploring preventive measures against the expansion of armed conflicts in Central America, which, in December 1986 decided to merge with the so-called Group of Eight, which in turn was called the Río Group in October 1990 coinciding with its expansion to include Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay. Sanguinetti presided the II Group of Eight Meeting, in Punta del Este on 29 October 1988.

In his first presidential term, the Uruguayan economy, which had suffered from a deep depression until 1985, registered positive indicators with production growth, a reduction in inflation, stabilization of unemployment and an increase in exports. The confrontation with trade unions -which demanded separation from the IMF and non-payment of the national debt- was compensated with opening up agreements among political parties to strengthen the consensus between the parties in order to bring forward legislation which was in the general interest. The result of this consensus was the National Agreement which was signed on 1 April 1986 by PC, PN, the left-wing Broad Front (FA) and the conservative Unión Cívica (UC).

Towards the end of his presidency, in spite of the agreements reached for its re-financing, Uruguay's foreign debt kept on increasing, always slightly below GDP, which also reduced to a virtually inexistent growth rate. Inflation also experimented a strong increase and 1990 ended with a 130% inflation rate.

On 1 March 1990, Sanguinetti handed over the Presidency to Luis Alberto Lacalle, the PN candidate who had won the elections on 26 November 1989. Sanguinetti remained committed to journalism and to academic activities as well as to the internal politics of his party as the leader of the Batllist Forum, which had a Social Democratic ideology, the most important faction of PC along with Batllismo Unido, headed by Jorge Batlle.

In 1994 he was once again the most-voted pre-candidate in the PC primaries and that victory was transferred to the presidential elections on 27 November 1994 which he won with 24.7% of the vote, beating Tabaré Vázquez of the Encuentro Progresista-Frente Amplio (EP-FA) coalition, the other PC candidates - Jorge Batlle and Jorge Pacheco - as well as the three PN candidates, the strongest of which was Alberto César Volonté Berro who received 14.9% of the vote.

In reality, Vázquez was the individual candidate who received most votes, but according to the Ley de Lemas still in force at the time, the winning candidate was to be the most voted candidate from the most-voted party or political grouping and not necessarily the most voted individual candidate (in practice this only affected the two biggest parties). This is what occurred on this occasion since the Colorado Party, adding the votes received by Sanguinetti, Batlle and Pacheco, received 32.3%, higher than the 31.2% received by the three PN candidates and the 30.6% received by Vázquez's Broad Front. On 1 March 1995 Sanguinetti started out on his second presidential period as the third leader to be re-elected in the country's history.

Sanguinetti formed a coalition Government with PN which received 4 ministries, the Gobierno del Pueblo Party (PGP) - created by those who had broken away from the PC- whose leader, Hugo Batalla, was given the Vice-Presidency-, along with an independent cabinet minister with Unión Cívica ties.

This alliance framework allowed him to bring the budget through a parliament divided in equal parts between the three main groups each year until the end of his term along with the reforms of the Social Security Law –attacked by worker and pensioner organizations- as well as the constitutional reform. Guaranteed the backing of two-thirds of the parliament, this reform, which eliminated the almost hundred-year old Ley de Lemas, was supported by 50.45% of the votes and came into force on 14 January 1997.

The amendments strengthened the executive power against the legislative power and undertook a profound reform of the electoral system. Among other points, it introduced the presentation of only one presidential candidate per party and the need for a second round in the elections if no single candidate received an overall majority in the first round.

The expansionist economic policy of his Government brought about a reduction in the recession of -1.8% which had been registered the previous year, partly due to a fall in exports, and gave way to high growth rates that didn't generate inflation. The opposite is true in fact, this variable experimented a continuous fall until it reached around 6% in 1999. The positive results in trading and in key production sectors generated employment that gave way to improved salaries and pensions, a general increase in income that in turn increased investment and internal consumption.

This boom panorama was drastically affected by the Brazilian crisis of 1998-1999, which reduced the products it bought from Uruguay; Brazil was the destination of more than a third of total Uruguayan exports. This interdependence was created within MERCOSUR, whose IX, XIII and XVII summits were hosted by Sanguinetti, respectively on the 7 December 1995 in Punta del Este, 15 December 1997 in Montevideo, and, again, on 8 December 1999, also in Montevideo.

On 1 March 2000 his term as President ended and he handed over the Presidency to his colleague Jorge Batlle, who had won the elections on 28 November 1999.

Post-2000

Always active in journalism and in the cultural world, during his break from presidential duties between 1990 and 1995 Sanguinetti was a columnist for the EFE Press Agency and El País Newspaper, both Spanish companies. His link with Spain was strengthened as the Director of several Seminars organized by the Complutense University in Madrid and as a lecturer in summer courses at the Menéndez Pelayo International University in Santander.

Since 1996 he has promoted the work of individuals from the political and intellectual world, including the former Colombian President Belisario Betancur, the former Spanish President, Felipe González, the former President of Chile, Ricardo Lagos and the former President of Brazil, Fernando Cardoso. This group is known as the Montevideo Circle.

Since 1990, he has also been President of the PAX Institute, an academic foundation for international action. He is likewise a member of the InterAcción Council – another forum for retired world leaders that centers its work on the elaboration of reports and studies offering advice on diverse areas of the international arena- as well as of the Council of Presidents and Prime Ministers of the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

He has professed support for the same-sex marriage bill recently introduced into the Uruguayan legislature.^[1]

Writings

He has received honorary doctorate degrees from the Universities of Brasilia (1985), Moscow (1990), Asunción (1994), Genoa and Bucharest, and, excluding short articles and studies, he has published the books entitled Alcances y aplicaciones de la nueva Constitución uruguaya [The Scope and Application of the New Uruguayan Constitution] (1967), La nación, el nacionalismo y otros ismos [The Nation, Nationalism and other '-isms'] (1978), El temor y la impaciencia Fear and Impatience (1991), El año 501 [The Year 501] (1992), Un mundo sin Marx [A World without Marx] (1993) y Meditaciones del milenio [Meditations of the Millennium] (1994).

Awards/Honours

He has been awarded the order of Boyacá (Colombia), San Carlos (Colombia), Sól (Peru), Malta, Isabel La Católica (España), José Matías Delgado (El Salvador), Quetzal (Guatemala and Honduras), Cruzeiro do Sul (Brasil), Merit (Chile), Mariscal Francisco Solano López (Paraguay), Libertador General San Martín (Argentina), Libertador (Venezuela), Andrés Bello (Venezuela), Águila Azteca (Mexico) and Manuel Amador Guerrero (Panama), among others. He is a Knight of the Great Cross (Italy) and a holder of the Great Cross of the French Legion of Honor.

In 2007, Sanguinetti was awarded the prestigious FCG International Award for a Lifetime Achievement by the Cristóbal Gabarrón Foundation from Spain (FCG International Awards).

He is also a member of the Club of Madrid,^[2] an independent organization dedicated to strengthening democracy around the world.

Family

He is married to the historian and journalist Marta Canessa; they have two children.

References

See also

• Politics of Uruguay
• List of political families#Uruguay