URUGUAY: The Swiss Way

With their usual equanimity in political matters, Uruguayans quietly witnessed a notable change in their country’s government last week. Just one year after his inauguration, President Andrés Martínez Trueba stepped down from his high office and took oath as a member of the new nine-man federal council. Thus the “Switzerland of the Americas” became one of the two countries in the world to be governed by an executive council with a rotating chairmanship. (The other: Switzerland.) As its first presiding officer, the council chose a man who had worked hard to persuade Uruguayans to abolish the presidency and adopt the “collegiate” council government: ex-President Andrés Martínez Trueba.