Alberto Demicheli

Pedro Alberto Demicheli Lizaso (Rocha, August 7, 1896 - Montevideo, October 12, 1980) was a lawyer, historian, journalist and Uruguayan de facto president. He governed Uruguay in 1976.

Biography

Born in Rocha, he was the son of Pedro Gerónimo Demicheli Mussio (1873-1938) and Balbina Lizaso Ballarena (1873-1949).

As a young man, he moved to Montevideo to study law. There he met his future wife, Sofía Álvarez Vignoli, who was also studying law. After completing their degree, they married and had two children: Julio Alberto (1938-1975) and María Adelina (Mayella) Demicheli Álvarez (1930).

He joined the Colorado Party and was elected as a deputy and senator. He would later be Gabriel Terra's Minister of the Interior. When on March 31, 1933, President Gabriel Terra dissolved Parliament and the National Administration Council, he created a nine-member Governing Board to advise the Executive Power. Demicheli was one of the members of said Board, along with Pablo Galarza, Francisco Ghigliani, Andrés Felipe Puyol, Pedro Manini Ríos, José Espalter, Roberto Berro, Alfredo Navarro and Aniceto Patrón.

He also had an outstanding performance as a soccer manager. Between 1933 and 1934 he presided over Club Atlético Peñarol.

On June 27, 1973, with the support of the Armed Forces, President Juan María Bordaberry carried out a coup, dissolving Parliament and replacing it with a Council of State. The presidency of the Council of State was initially occupied by Martín Echegoyen but, after his death in 1974, it became occupied by Demicheli.

In June 1976, the disagreements between Bordaberry and the military generated the political crisis that culminated in the removal of the president and the appointment, on June 12, of Alberto Demicheli to occupy the first magistracy. His first measure was the issuance of two constitutional decrees, Institutional Acts 1 and 2. By Institutional Act No. 1, the call for general elections provided for in Article 77, paragraph 9, of the Constitution was suspended. By Institutional Act No. 2, the Council of the Nation was created, also not provided for by the Constitution, giving it powers to designate the President of the Republic, the President and Members of the Council of State, Members of the Supreme Court of Justice, of the Contentious-Administrative Tribunal and the Electoral Court.

Regarding economic policy, Demicheli ratified the National Development Plan drawn up in 1972 during the Bordaberry government. The applied economic policy sought a radical reformulation of the bases of the country's economic functioning, a new alliance between the military and the technobureaucracy, aimed at transforming the productive structures of foreign trade, income distribution, demand and relative prices, in a framework of broad liberalization and opening of the economy.

Demichelli refused, on the other hand, to enable with his signature heavy proscriptions on the political cast, for which he was dismissed by the military and replaced on September 1, 1976 by Aparicio Méndez, who immediately dictated several Institutional Acts, among them, the Institutional Act No. 4 that excluded the main political actors from public life.

His law books were for many years study and consultation texts at the Law School of the University of the Republic.

Ministers