Winning by Losing

Never in Uruguay's 143-year history had an election been cast in such apocalyptic terms. As 1,700,000 Uruguayan voters--an impressive 87% of the electorate--trooped to the polls last week, the full-page political advertisements in the country's hotly partisan newspapers fairly screamed. NOW YOU CAN CHOOSE

YOUR GOVERNMENT, YOUR WORK, YOUR EDUCATION, said one ad. WILL YOU BE ABLE TO DO IT TOMORROW? Attother put it more bluntly: VOTE DEMOCRACY, OR ELSE YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO VOTE ANY MORE.

The way to vote for democracy, it was made clear, was to vote against the Frente Amplio (Broad Front), a fast-growing coalition of left-wing parties and splinter groups not unlike the leftist coalition that carried Marxist Salvador Allende to power in Chile last year. Formed only ten months ago, the Front grew rapidly with support from Uruguay's restive labor unions and the youthful Tupamaro terrorists, as well as left-wing students, intellectuals and Catholic revolutionary groups-- all bitter enemies of the toughly disciplinarian government headed by President Jorge Pacheco Areco.

Grabbing the Handle. On the eve of the election, some pollsters gave the Front a fair chance to beat both Pacheco's Colorados and the opposition Blancos, the two middle-reading parties which have traditionally dominated Uruguayan politics. Maybe next time. Minimizing their differences, which are small to begin with, the Colorados and Blancos joined forces against the Front in a campaign that played upon the traditionally conservative Uruguayan voter's reluctance to experiment, his deep-seated fear of Communism and his distaste for the Chilean experience. Thus the Front's hopes for a truly stupendous first showing were disappointed. In Montevideo, where the Front had fully expected to win big, its candidate ran a poor second to the Colorados. Nationwide the Front polled a respectable but unspectacular 16% of the vote, trailing both the Blancos (34%) and the Colorados (35%). The winning Colorado presidential candidate, wealthy, taciturn Minister of Agriculture Juan M. Bor-daberry, 43, is expected to continue Pacheco's tough response to Uruguay's political and economic problems.

Nevertheless, the Front's members --including Communists, Socialists, Christian Democrats, anarchists and Trotskyites, as well as renegade Colorados and Blancos--are not discouraged. Said Thelman Borges, a Communist official in Montevideo: "Even losing, we will be winning. They [the traditional parties] have had it." If Borges and his comrades have their way, the parties allied with the Communists in the Front will ultimately have had it too. "We"--meaning the Communists --"intend to grab the handle," he said. Such candor, however laudable, is unlikely to ease the voters' fears.

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