Uruguay’s leftist opposition candidate Yamandú Orsi becomes country’s new president

Yamandú Orsi, candidate for the Broad Front and running mate Carolina Cosse, right, celebrate after polls closed in the presidential runoff election in Montevideo, Uruguay, on Sunday. Uruguay’s leftist opposition candidate, Yamandú Orsi, became the country’s new president in a tight runoff Sunday, ousting the conservative governing coalition and making the South American nation the latest to rebuke the incumbent party in a year of landmark elections worldwide. “I will be the president who calls for national dialogue again and again, who builds a more integrated society and country.” As initial exit polls began showing Orsi, 57, a working-class former history teacher and two-time mayor from Uruguay’s Broad Front coalition, holding a lead over Delgado, cheers rang out across Montevideo’s beaches. Despite Orsi’s promise to lead a “new left” in Uruguay, his platform resembles the mix of market-friendly policies and welfare programs initiated under Mujica and other Broad Front leaders. “This is no small feat,” he said of his nation’s “citizenry that respects formal institutions.” Orsi, who for a decade served as mayor of Canelones — a town of beaches and cattle ranches also home to a Google data center and upstart tech scene — proposes tax incentives to lure investment and revitalize the critical agricultural sector.