Uruguay: the signature floor for the referendum against the Lacalle Pou law has been largely exceeded | The Broad Front promoted the campaign to plebiscite the controversial standard

From below and in its streets, Uruguay is already going through referendum times. Ordinary people, political and social sectors, unions, cultural and sporting spaces, from Montevideo and Punta del Este to Rivera and Paysandú, collected the necessary signatures to convene a popular consultation aimed at repealing 135 articles of the discredited law on urgent considerations (LUC). The rule approved in Congress on July 8, 2020 is almost a fetish tool with which President Luis Lacalle Pou had already started to change the lives of his fellow citizens. Now it has to come through popular control. The minimum membership floor was significantly exceeded – 675 thousand or its equivalent at 25 percent of the voters list – and they were delivered one day before the required deadline, July 9. Mathematical logic indicated that this was a complex theorem that seemed impractical. But it didn’t go like that. And even less for those who, with their activism and their commitment, decided to take the task in hand.

Nearly 800,000 signatures

On June 22, 16 days ago, 572,551 signatures had been reached – as this journalist reflected in another article – and the desired goal still seemed far away: to collect a quarter of the roll to pave the way for the referendum . Between this number and the one who finally it was possible to collect, 796 526 – according to the representative of Montevideo in the Plenary of the Front Large, Manuel Ferrer, confirmed to Página / 12 – there was a difference of 223,975 signatures. In other words, in just over two weeks 13,998 daily adhesions were obtained.

An effort that meant for Fernando Pereira, the president of the PIT-CNT, the union of Uruguayan workers “to feel proud of the people who went to fight in the streets and in all corners of the country, leaving their souls, with alcohol freezing in stock exchanges and distributing more than 6 million copies of material produced by the National Pro-Referendum Commission ”.

The union leader, from the city of Las Piedras, also said that “it was not a campaign of slogans, with messages such as ‘no to neoliberalism, no to government’ and yes with foundations, with information” . Pereira had called on the movement to collect signatures “the rebellion of pencils and blocks” in the most intense days of citizen action. And is that the collection process was cumbersome. He was required to participate, present the civic card, be on the register, sign the official ballot and take fingerprints. But also, faced with any problem that would arise to validate these data, it was necessary to write in pencil on the back of the voucher, the telephone number of the signatory who would be contacted in the event of cancellation of his support for the referendum.

Celebrate the big forehead

Satisfaction with the result obtained in the campaign was reflected in social networks, in the interviews with the leaders of Frente Amplio, in memes, in each message on the 796,526 signatures submitted to the Electoral Tribunal. So far the militancy of the Broad Front led by its president Javier Miranda, with an urn on the litter. Here, the signature count and subsequent validation will be performed.

The second chapter of this feat will begin when the nine members of the court determine whether the conditions for submitting the 135 most controversial articles of the LUC to consultation have been met. The Lacalle Pou government – an alliance of five right-wing parties – has a majority with five members against four from the Broad Front.

The law of urgency This is a constitutional tool put in place during the 1967 reform which has not been widely used by the various heads of state. It was approved by the vote of 18 out of 30 senators on July 8. The LUC “modified 220 laws and it is an abuse of power” he declared Page 12 a few weeks ago, the senator of the Popular Participation Movement (MPP) of the FA, Alejandro Sánchez. Converted into a versatile norm that is already being felt in society, it has a matrix of economic adjustment, more active institutional repression and degrades public education. One of the consequences that we can already see for months that it has been in force is the shortening of the expulsion period. Now it has been reduced to 30 days and “there are already children living in tents,” said engineer Ferrer from Montevideo.

In Buenos Aires, on the other side of the Río de la Plata, the main trade union centers have joined the pro-referendum campaign. The Uruguayan community in Argentina is the largest in the world and has collected thousands of signatures. Among the many messages that have circulated on social networks, there is one that summarizes the state of mind of Uruguayans who participated in the popular consultation. You see a photograph of its president and a column that says: “If leftist activism will be good, the collection of signatures against the 135 LUC articles has already exceeded the number of voters for @LuisLacallePou: 29.77%, 645,189 “. He was referring to the numbers obtained in Primary 2019 where he obtained the ballot ten points below Daniel Martínez, the Front Large candidate.

The opposition which paved the way for the referendum is now moving towards the repeal of 135 articles of what the president called “a necessary, just and popular instrument”. For a considerable part of the Uruguayan people, the LUC is far from resembling it.