Jorge Batlle

Jorge Luis Batlle Ibáñez (Montevideo, October 25, 1927-Ib., October 24, 2016) was a Uruguayan lawyer, journalist, and politician. He served as President of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay between March 1, 2000 and March 1, 2005.

He was a senator of the Republic and a national deputy. After five presidential candidacies (1966, 1971, 1989, 1994, 1999), he was elected president of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, a position he held between March 1, 2000 and March 1, 2005.

He was the first president of the XXI century and the fourth member of the Batlle family, of Catalan descent, to occupy the presidency of the Republic. He is a member of the historic Colorado Party, from the Batllista sector. He defined himself conceptually as a liberal. During the end of his life, he devoted himself entirely to private activity, although he continued to have a voice in national politics.

Biography

Jorge Batlle was born into a family of political lineage on October 25, 1927. The son of Matilde Ibáñez, an Argentine born in Buenos Aires, and Luis Batlle Berres, who was President of the Republic between 1947 and 1951 and then a member of the National Government Council 1955-1959, as well as a legislator and journalist. Batlle was also a great-nephew of former Uruguayan President José Batlle y Ordóñez and, therefore, a great-grandson of former President Lorenzo Batlle. He was the brother of Luis and Matilde Batlle Ibáñez, he had Italian ancestry on his mother's side and Catalan on his father's side.

He completed his schooling at the German School of Montevideo and at the Elbio Fernández School and Lyceum.

In 1947 he traveled to London for studies. He graduated from the University of the Republic in 1956 as a lawyer. Since then he basically specialized in economic issues. His career as a journalist was based on columns he wrote daily in El Día, founded by his great-uncle, José Batlle y Ordóñez, in 1886. He was an editor, editorial secretary and director of the newspaper Acción, founded by his father in 1948. Between 1943 and 1976 he worked as a journalist and director of Radio Ariel, in which he initially hosted a jazz program.

Since 1956, when attending the conferences of two prominent economists of the Austrian school, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, in Buenos Aires, he felt influenced by their approaches to economic liberalism.

In 1988 he was invited to Spain by the Generalitat of Catalonia and spoke on economics at the Chamber of Commerce. That year he also maintained an intense activity at the Institute for Ibero-American Cooperation (currently the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation) in Madrid.

In 1989, when he was occupying a seat in the Senate, he married Mercedes Menafra, who was the second wife of the former president. With his previous wife, the Argentine Noemí Lamuraglia, he had two children: Raúl Lorenzo and Beatriz. He also has four grandchildren: Nicolás, Lorenzo, Gerónimo and María Paz.

In the sports field, he was a fan of the National Football Club, the Montevideo Rowing Club and passionate about horse racing. His intervention was essential for the reopening of the Maroñas Hippodrome.

Like his great-uncle Batlle y Ordónez, he said he did not belong to "any positive religion", but considered himself a deist.

Political career

Throughout his life, Batlle held numerous positions in the political area, among which stood out that of national deputy, senator of the republic and the most important position he held, which was that of president of Uruguay.

Early career

Batlle began his political career in 1958, when he was first elected deputy representing Montevideo for the Colorado Party. His period was between February 15, 1959 and February 14, 1963. During said period, he was a member of the National Defense Commission.

He was reelected to office for the same department for the period from February 15, 1963 to February 14, 1967. He was a delegate to the Meat Marketing Conference in England during 1963 and 1964.

Rise to national leadership

In 1965 he was elected after internal elections as the only leader of List 15, a position that had become vacant after the death of his father, on July 15, 1964.

However, the succession in leadership was not easy. Within the sector, Jorge Batlle proposed the return of the presidential system, which was opposed by two great leaders: Manuel Flores Mora and Amílcar Vasconcellos, who preferred to continue with the collegiate government system.

The most indicated for the succession in leadership was Flores Mora, a man of great ancestry and prestige. But, due to the divergences of opinion regarding the feasibility of implementing or not a more agile and effective presidential executive branch and not as slow and deliberative as the collegiate one, Jorge Batlle suggested that internal elections of the Batllismo be held in the List 15, and that the winner of the dispute would become the leader and that if his conception were the presidential one it should be adopted by the sector and then promote it in a constitutional reform.

This is how the son of the former president was elected and had the support of leaders such as Alberto Abdala, Héctor Grauert, Luis Hierro Gambardella, Eduardo Paz Aguirre and Alfredo Lepro, as well as young figures such as Julio María Sanguinetti, Antonio Marchesano, Francisco Forteza (son), Tabaré Hackenbruch and Washington García Rijo; the name of the sector became Unity and Reform.

But other notorious leaders with outstanding performance distanced themselves, such as Justino Carrere Sapriza, Manuel Flores Mora and Glauco Segovia, who formed the Colorado Unity Front.

A year later he was presidential candidate for the first time, accompanied in the formula by Julio Lacarte Muró, and was narrowly defeated by his party mate, Óscar Gestido, since in Uruguay the Ley de mottos governed, that is,, they voted for the candidate and the party or motto at the same time.

In 1965 he was one of the editors and promoters of the reform of the Constitution of the Republic, which was voted for and sanctioned in the 1966 election. In said electoral contest he appeared for the first time, accompanied in the formula by Julio Lacarte Muró without being elected president.

In April 1968, his image was seriously affected by a financial scandal called La Infidencia, according to which he personally took advantage of privileged information about an imminent devaluation of the currency by the government. The first accusation against Batlle came from the pages of El Debate, at that time directed by the white Washington Guadalupe. These accusations could never be proven.

In 1971 he was once again the presidential candidate for his party, in a formula completed by Renán Rodríguez, with much less success than on the previous occasion.

1971 Election Results

Result of the 1971 elections for the presidency of the Republic.

During the civic-military dictatorship

In October 1972, before the beginning of the civil-military dictatorship, he was confined in a barracks accused of alleged offenses against the Armed Forces, when Army officers began the campaign against "economic crimes" and they wanted to investigate the alleged Infidence.

In reality, his imprisonment meant a response to his complaints made through a television program that there were conversations and presumed understandings between the military and members of the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional-Tupamaros in the Florida Battalion headquarters, with the endorsement of Generals Gregorio Álvarez and Esteban Cristi at a time when they were technically at "war." Thus, he turned out to be the first political prisoner by express order of the military. He was later released and subsequently arrested again on more than one occasion.

During the civil-military dictatorship, Batlle, like other political leaders, was outlawed by Institutional Act No. 4 of September 1, 1976. He spent a good part of those years in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), dedicating itself to the purchase and sale of livestock at livestock fairs and auctions.

Between 1976 and 1983, together with Amílcar Vasconcellos and Raumar Jude, he was a member of the triumvirate that clandestinely led the Colorado Party. He participated in political activities in search of an understanding with the Armed Forces, together with the Triumvirate of the National Party.

During the democratic restoration

In November 1984, in the first elections after the dictatorship, he was still outlawed for the presidential candidacy, but not for the senatorial candidacy; however, his sector triumphed in the elections with the candidacy of Dr. Julio María Sanguinetti. He was elected senator, heading Senate List 15. Thus, on February 15, 1985, he presided over the opening ceremony of the Legislature, and on March 1, he swore in Sanguinetti and Enrique Tarigo as president and vice president, respectively. He held his seat as senator between 1985 and 1989. During this period he was a member of the Livestock and Agriculture, Finance and National Defense commissions. In turn, he was Uruguay's delegate to the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Ottawa in September 1985. In October 1986 he chaired the Uruguayan delegation to the United Nations General Assembly session.

The 1989 and 1994 elections

For the 1989 elections, President Sanguinetti decided to support the presidential candidacy of his Vice President Enrique Tarigo, ignoring Batlle's political aspirations. On that occasion he even declared that Sanguinetti, who was his political subordinate until 1985, "ripped off his arm without anesthesia". However, internal elections were held in Batllismo, and in them, Batlle's candidacy triumphed very comfortably over that of Tarigo, thus twisting the presidential will.

In those national elections, for which he participated in the presidential ticket shared with Jorge Sanguinetti, Batlle spoke out against a proposed constitutional reform, favorable to the retirees sector. This position, according to many observers, was fatal for his presidential candidacy, in a country where passives represented a high share of the electorate. Despite this, Batlle won the red internal party by a narrow margin, obtaining 14.8% of the total votes cast against 14.7% for former president Jorge Pacheco Areco, but the elections were won by the National Party.

Result of the 1989 elections

Result of the 1989 elections for the presidency of the Republic.

In 1990, List 15 split. The wounds produced by the internal pre-election dispute during the 1989 elections led to the separation of Sanguinetti, who founded the Batllista Forum. Batlle remained as conductor of List 15.

In 1994 he was a presidential candidate for the fourth time, with Federico Bouza as his running mate. His voting was very low, he obtained 3% of the votes cast and 8% of the internal Colorado party, but in the internal accumulation within the Colorado Party it was decisive for Sanguinetti's victory. He was re-elected senator, holding the only Senate seat on List 15 between 1995 and 1999.

Result of the 1994 elections

Result of the 1994 elections for the presidency of the Republic.

The 1999 Elections

In the Colorado Party internal elections held in April 1999, he defeated Foro Batllista candidate Luis Hierro López by 10 points and Batlle became his party's presidential candidate. In October of that year, accompanied in the presidential formula by Hierro López, he came second with 32% of the adhesions and went to the second round or runoff where he faced the Frente Amplio candidate Tabaré Vázquez. An alliance with the entire spectrum of the center-right (National Party and Civic Union) plus the support of the voters of the New Space (social democrat), allowed him to become president-elect on November 28, thus continuing the legacy of his family.

He took office as president of Uruguay on March 1, 2000 with high expectations from the business sectors and in the liberal spectrum of the political structure. His presidency was marked by a contrast of failures and successes.

1999 Election Results

Result of the first round of the 1999 elections for the presidency of the Republic.

Result of the second round of the 1999 elections for the presidency of the Republic.

Presidency of the Republic

International politics

Within what was International Policy in the government of Jorge Batlle, the rapprochement achieved between the United States and Uruguay stands out, due to the friendship that united the then Uruguayan president and the American, George H. W. Bush, father of the Former President George W. Bush. The disagreements with Argentina are also highlighted due to some unfortunate statements by Batlle to the press about that country and its ruler Eduardo Duhalde. As well as the rupture of diplomatic relations with Cuba in April 2002.

Jorge Batlle and former President George H. W. Bush in Uruguay.

Relationship with the United States

The relationship with the United States was one of the best relations that Uruguay has had with the North American country. Batlle first met Bush in April 2001 in the Canadian city of Quebec where the "III Summit of the Americas" took place. At that meeting, Bush thanked Batlle for asking the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, who was visiting Uruguay the days before the meeting in Quebec, to release the twenty-four US soldiers who were imprisoned in Hainan at that time. From there they began to have telephone conversations more often, and Batlle tirelessly sought a free trade agreement with that country, which did not materialize because at the end of his government Tabaré Vázquez took office, who preferred not to sign the treaty. During the Batlle government, the export of meat to that country rose notoriously.

In times of economic crisis in 2002, the United States was key to getting out of it. When the IMF decided that Uruguay was no longer a safe country to lend him more money, Batlle went to Bush asking for help and he agreed and Batlle's economic team met in Washington D.C. with the US economic team. The meetings lasted weeks and long days. The United States granted a loan to the country of large amounts of money that were destined for deposits in banks, so that they avoid closing.

Relationship with Argentina

Relations with Argentina were stable during Batlle's tenure. However, relations became tense when Batlle made strong statements in an interview on Bloomberg TV.

The interview was conducted on Monday, June 3, 2002, bothering Batlle from the beginning because the journalist insisted on asking him if Uruguay would suffer the same fate as Argentina. When the interview ended, the cameras remained on without Batlle noticing. Thinking that the cameras were already turned off, Batlle exclaimed indignantly: "What a disease these guys have! What do I have to do with Argentina?". The journalist continued to ask him about the Uruguayan situation in comparison with Argentina, when Batlle exploded and answered him with harsh words that would be widely disseminated by the press from both countries: "...dear friend (referring to the journalist), in 2001 the Argentine situation, with the Argentine problems. A sleeve of thieves from first to last! Understands? (...) Now, don't compare Argentina with Uruguay, or are you ignorant? & # 34;.Then he continued with very rude words referring to Eduardo Duhalde, who presided over Argentina. When the journalist named Duhalde, Batlle replied, "But how am I going to ask Duhalde anything, dear?" He has no political strength, he has no support, he does not know where he is going & # 34;.

When the images went on the air, there was great surprise among Uruguayans and Argentines. The leaders and politicians of these countries were very surprised, as was Batlle, who maintained from the beginning that this had been an informal talk and off the record. It was then that Duhalde contacted the Argentine ambassador in Montevideo and summoned the Uruguayan to his office in Buenos Aires to receive explanations. Batlle immediately called Duhalde and apologized for the case, he also said that he would go to Buenos Aires to publicly apologize to him and to the Argentine people. Carlos Menem, who was going to visit the country the days after the scandal, suspended his visit. Tabaré Vázquez was harsh with his criticism of the president, while Julio María Sanguinetti and Luis Alberto Lacalle, leaders of the ruling party, called for silence. The Youth of the Socialist Party was even harsher with Batlle than Vázquez had been, since they maintained that it was "necessary to carry out a psychiatric examination of Dr. Batlle, with the best professionals& #34;. The same night of June 3, Batlle held a press conference to clarify the scope of his statements, explaining that the journalist had provoked him with annoying statements. However, on June 4, he traveled to Buenos Aires and publicly apologized at Olivos' residence. Before the cameras and the Argentine president, Batlle confessed to having lived through an "authentic ordeal" those days as a result of his statements and that his mother, Matilde Ibáñez, an Argentine national, had reprimanded him for his statements, in addition, he confessed all this with tears in his eyes. Finally, Eduardo Duhalde concluded the problem with a handshake and hug between them. However, this dispute became one of the most important scandals in the Batlle government.

Relationship with Cuba

In April 2002, the then president of Cuba, Fidel Castro, gave a press conference to discuss Cuba and Mexico's relationship with the UN, when he decided to refer to President Batlle as "a Judas, a genuflexor and a a great liar", since Batlle had presented a draft resolution to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights questioning the situation of human rights in the Cuban country and requested the sending of a representative of the international organization to the island to study the situation. In response to these statements, the Uruguayan president decided to break relations, formalizing the break the day after Castro said:

I have asked the chancellor to take the steps to establish this situation of breaking relations, until it is warned by who it is, that what Uruguay wants is for the Cuban people to have more freedom and to be raised to the Cuban people what any democratic people have and notoriously there does not exist; freedom.

After the break in relations, Castro said he did not show concern and reiterated his statements before the press, and even went deeper into them, accusing the Uruguayan president of being a fraud.

Relations between Uruguay and Cuba remained frozen throughout Batlle's government, until on March 1, 2005, Reinaldo Gargano undertook his first assignment as chancellor of the Republic and reestablished relations with that country at the request of the president Tabaré Vázquez, who from the opposition effusively condemned the break.

After the resignation of Fidel Castro, on February 20, 2008, Batlle declared to the press: «Not only has there not been [democracy in Cuba], but also those who have wanted to leave, we know well what it has happened [...], hopefully freedom will be established once and for all in Cuba».

National Policy

Jorge Batlle and members of his cabinet in 2003.

During his government, a series of changes and reforms of the State were proposed; Some were successful, such as the creation of the URSEC, but other more ambitious ones, such as the demonopolization of fuels, foundered due to the opposition of unions of public entities. Some of his measures were also resisted by members of his own party. There were advances in the disclosure of information about the Uruguayan dictatorship, although only at the beginning of his term, since after a few months of it, expectations were not met. A deep economic crisis was overcome that almost ended the figure of the president and left the country with the highest unemployment rate ever seen, an enormous number of suicides and deposits in banks that had vanished.

Human Rights

In the first months of his government, Batlle sought a definitive solution to the problem of the disappeared during the civic-military dictatorship with the creation of the Commission for Peace. This commission, made up of lawyers from the Colorado Party, the National Party, the Broad Front, the Archbishop of Montevideo and social personalities, prepared a report on the final destination of 30 cases and found the remains of two of them, they were handed over to their relatives in Argentina. Although it was highly disputed, this Commission marked a milestone in the recent political history of the country and proof of this was that Batlle's popularity reached 66%, the highest figure, up to that moment, since the popularity of the presidents. Batlle then became the first Latin American president to explicitly recognize the existence of the Condor Plan, and to confirm that there were many more cases to be resolved. During Batlle's government, the granddaughter of the Argentine poet Juan was successfully found. Gelman to be able to bring them together. However, Batlle began to pay less importance to these issues as time went by, therefore the important advances he had at the beginning of his government were offset by the little attention he paid to them at the end. In fact, Gelman, who had expressed his happiness for the discovery of his granddaughter, declared almost 2 years later that Batlle had used said search politically and also said that he knew very well where the body of his daughter-in-law, the disappeared María Claudia García, lay. In turn, Gelman contradicted Batlle's then Defense Minister, Yamandú Fau, who said that there were no indications that her daughter-in-law was buried in the 13th Infantry Battalion.

Economic, political and social crisis of 2002

Since the period of government of Julio María Sanguinetti, Uruguay faced a severe economic recession. However, Batlle's economic team, made up of Alberto Bensión as minister, César Rodríguez Batlle as director of the Central Bank of Uruguay and the economist Ariel Davrieux directing the Office of Planning and Budget, did not have a government plan when he took office. to counteract this phenomenon.

In July 2002, in one of the hottest moments of the banking crisis, the senator of the Broad Front, Alberto Couriel, was in charge of the interpellation of the then minister Alberto Bensión, in which all the members of the Broad Front and a few of the National Party formally asked him to resign from office. This did not happen, but Rodríguez Batlle was removed.

In mid-July, the National Party, until then an ally of the Batlle government, rejected the economic policy it was carrying out. It was then that, together with the Broad Front, they again asked for Bensión's resignation and this time they had better luck. Bension left office on August 20 and Alejandro Atchugarry took over, who was then serving as a senator for the Colorado Party. Atchugarry, who had just suffered the loss of his wife after a long illness, was reluctant to take over. However, Batlle found in him what he was looking for, a more political than technical minister. Batlle put the senator in a compromising situation, and suggested that if he did not take over as minister, he would have to resign from the presidency and Luis Hierro López would have to take the reins of the country. I love and respect him like a father... well, children don't say no to their parents". of his political sector.

On July 30, a bank holiday was declared. The Batlle government excused itself, saying that it was an express request from the IMF to proceed with the liquidation of the banks of the Peirano group. The purpose of this decision was to stop the flight of deposits that the Uruguayan financial market had been suffering since 2001, since many Argentine savers went to their savings in Uruguay when they found themselves unable to withdraw money in their country. The ATMs ran out of money, the exchange houses sold the dollar at 38 pesos and bought it at 24. The bank holiday ended on Monday, August 5.

The night of July 31 resulted in the first looting of a supermarket in the vicinity of the Legislative Palace. On August 1, there was a wave of these phenomena that shook the city of Montevideo. There were more than thirty, and this time they happened in marginal areas. Many merchants expressed their willingness not to reopen their shops the next day for fear of being looted. The Minister of the Interior, Guillermo Stirling, tried to reassure the population by announcing a reinforcement of police surveillance for future occasions. On August 2 there was no looting, however, a wave of rumors invaded the city. It was rumored that a horde of people was heading towards the center of Montevideo looting everything in their path. The merchants instantly closed their doors and the center of the city was left desolate. A strong police operation was arranged and the Air Force flew over the capital using helicopters in search of the horde of looters that never arrived and perhaps never existed.

While chaos reigned in the country in the United States, Isaac Alfie commanded the delegation that Batlle had sent to form a working group with delegates from the United States government, since Horst Köhler, director of the IMF, had given the order of not lending one more dollar to Uruguay. Finally, the United States government agreed with Uruguay on a bridge loan of 1.5 billion dollars to capitalize the state banks (it is said that the brothers of the two presidents, Jeb Bush and Luis Batlle Ibáñez, friends among themselves, were intermediaries in this effort, although this has not been proven). The country avoided defaulting on its debt, and began to emerge from the country's economic crisis.

In November, the National Party decided to remove ministers Antonio Mercader, Álvaro Alonso, Carlos Cat, Sergio Abreu and Jaime Trobo from their posts in the Batlle government as they wanted to break away from him.

The banking crisis of 2002 left devastating figures for the country. Such is the case of the suicide rate, which increased by 12.6%, meaning that two Uruguayans committed suicide per day and there were many cases of self-elimination attempts.

As a direct economic consequence of this crisis, real wages fell sharply, reaching its floor between 2003 and 2004 with a loss of 22% compared to the year 2000. For its part, the unemployment rate climbed to a maximum in 2002 of 17%, rising 3 and a half percentage points compared to the time he took office. Towards the end of his government, unemployment rates reversed their trend, reaching lower figures than those at the time of his assumption. On the contrary, the fall suffered by real wages could not be reversed, standing in 2005, 18.6 percentage points below the figures for 2000.

Presidential approval

Presidential adoption.

Jorge Batlle assumed the presidency in March 2000 with an approval rating of 58%, even higher than the percentage of adherents to his candidacy in the elections. Despite seeing a slight decline, the percentage remained at high indicators in the following months. This fact was mainly due to the fact that the population mainly considered political elements and the president's image, rather than economic factors.

With the passage of time and the worsening of the recession, the strong economic crisis displaced other factors when considering his performance, and his approval percentage shows a sharp drop that coincides with the 2002 crisis, touching his minimum in August 2004 with only 1% of Uruguayans satisfied with his management. Towards the end of his term, a slight rise could be seen, standing at 5% in December 2004. In 2003 it was asked if Uruguayans believed that Batlle had been fully responsible for the country's financial crisis, to which 63% answered in the affirmative, 20% answered in the negative. If we talk about sectors, among the front supporters, 71% blamed him. However, 56% of whites and 78% of Colorados believed that the then-president did everything that could be done to get around the crisis.

Cabinet

The 2004 elections and after

In the 2004 elections, while the Broad Front obtained electoral victory, naming Tabaré Vázquez as his successor, Batlle was elected senator for the following term. However, when the time came to assume the bench, he resigned from it, being replaced by whoever was his last Minister of Economy, Isaac Alfie.

When Vázquez was elected president, he offered Batlle the possibility of being Uruguay's ambassador to the United States, taking into account the great relationship that the then president had with the George W. Bush government, however, Batlle decided to reject the proposal after a public thanks appealing that it was notorious that he was no longer a good diplomat.

Last years

Until his death, Batlle dedicated himself to touring the country to contribute to the analysis of the central issues of corporate life and stimulate public discussion of them. He continued to be a leading political figure and actively participated in the National Conventions of the Colorado Party, although he was not a member of the National Deliberative Body. He met with young people from all over the country discussing issues of common interest. He continued to enjoy his passion for books and his horses.

After the internal elections of June 2009, in which the overwhelming winner was Pedro Bordaberry, Batlle was considered to have reached the end of his political leadership, like his co-religionist Julio María Sanguinetti.

On October 14, 2016, Batlle suffered an accident in Tacuarembó after a political activity, being admitted to the CTI of the hospital in that city. He hit his head when he fell to the ground due to dizziness, resulting in the formation of an intracranial hematoma that compressed the brain. In June of the same year he had received a transcatheter aortic valve implantation, for which reason he was taking anticoagulants, which made the operation difficult. The surgical process was carried out between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. on October 14 by the neurosurgeon Martín Fernández and a team of specialists. The surgery was successful, but he continued in serious condition. That night he was transferred to the CTI of the American Sanatorium in Montevideo. Five days later, the doctors decided to start removing the sedatives, but he did not react favorably. On Thursday night, the 20th, the sanatorium announced that Batlle had "severe brain damage".

He passed away on October 24, 2016. He was veiled in the Hall of the Lost Steps of the Legislative Palace from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The Executive Power decreed a day of official mourning with funeral honors and flags at half mast in all State departments, both inside and outside the borders.

Honors and decorations

• Medal to the Military Merit in the Official General Degree (Uruguay Uruguay, 17 May 2011).