MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY — Voters in Latin America’s most stable democracy, Uruguay, go to the polls on Sunday in a presidential election pitting a left-wing history teacher against a conservative veterinarian and a bodybuilding lawyer.
Polls show security topping the concerns of voters in the tiny country of 3.4 million people, wedged between Brazil and Argentina and facing an increase in drug-related violence in recent years.
The current president, Lacalle Pou, is barred by the constitution from seeking a second consecutive five-year term.
Polls show history professor Yamandu Orsi, 57, from the center-left Frente Amplio (Broad Front) of cult former president Jose “Pepe” Mujica, leading the race.
They show Alvaro Delgado, a 55-year-old conservative veterinarian from Lacalle Pou’s National Party in second and telegenic lawyer Andres Ojada, 40, of the Colorado Party in third.
“I vote for the Broad Front because it is always on the side of the people,” Narahiana Lopez, a 26-year-old supporter of Orsi’s, told AFP during his final campaign rally in the capital Montevideo.
Orsi is a protege of the famously humble Mujica.
He was born in the countryside in a house with no electricity and campaigned as a man of the people.
Delgado has sought to woo rural voters by saying he is happier on horseback than in one of Uruguay’s ritzy beach resorts.
But he was mocked as a “caveman” on social media during the campaign for calling his running mate, former trade unionist Valeria Ripoll, a “hottie”.
He later apologized, calling the remark a “mistake.”
Ojeda, a TV legal pundit and bodybuilding fanatic who compares himself to Argentina’s libertarian President Milei, caused a stir by recording a campaign ad in the gym, where he flaunted his toned physique.
