Uruguay: Disillusion in Utopia

Uruguayans pride themselves on having the purest democracy in the Western Hemisphere. They got it 14 years ago, when the nation abolished its one-man presidency and set up a Swiss-style nine-man National Council, in which four members of the majority party take annual turns as the country’s nominal President. It turned out to be too much of a good thing, for the government was paralyzed much of the time and the men in power could not resist voting an ever greater welfare state for its 2,600,000 people.

Today the tiny wool-and beef-producing nation offers so many giveaways (among them: full-pay retirement at 55) that Uruguay is all but broke. To pay its burdensome bills, the government has simply printed more money, run its foreign debt to more than $500 million, and created a galloping inflation (up 85% last year) that has triggered a string of crippling strikes and demonstrations.

Realizing that they were enjoying too much of a good thing, more than 800,000 Uruguayans signed petitions against the present system. So last week Uruguay’s National Assembly voted to hold a public referendum on Nov. 27 that seems almost certain to return the country to strong, one-man presidential rule.