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MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — Voters in the small South American nation of Uruguay cast ballots Sunday in a presidential election in which a center-left rural mayor pulled ahead of the conservative incumbent-party candidate and pushed the race into a second round of voting.

Both of the leading candidates — a two-time mayor and former history teacher, Yamandú Orsi, and the center-right ruling party’s candidate, Álvaro Delgado — told crowds of supporters late Sunday that they expected to face each other in a runoff on Nov. 24, reflecting official election results with over 80% of votes counted.

The outcome came as little surprise. But the civility of the presidential race was striking, the contest between moderates defying trends of bitter division and democratic erosion seen across the region and further north in the United States.

Orsi, representing Uruguay’s center-left Broad Front alliance that held the presidency in Uruguay from 2005-2019, went into the election as the front-runner, reflecting a desire for a stronger social safety net in one of Latin America’s most expensive countries, where one in five children lives in poverty and an aging population has clamored for higher pensions.

“We are going in for these 27 days,” Orsi told thousands of energized supporters in Montevideo, referring to his final campaign push ahead of the run-off set for Nov. 24. “The Broad Front is once again the most voted party in Uruguay.”

Delgado — the former chief of staff of President Luis Lacalle Pou who trained as a veterinarian — campaigned on pledges to continue the policies of Lacalle Pou, who has a 50% approval rating. The constitution bars the current president from running for a second consecutive term.

“People placed their trust in us,” he told a massive gathering of his supporters shortly after midnight. “Tomorrow we will be meeting to plan the campaign for the runoff.”

Delgado was joined onstage by the election’s most dynamic candidate, Andrés Ojeda, 40, who placed in a distant third but secured a surprisingly strong showing for a muscular, media-savvy lawyer with a penchant for adopting dogs and discussing star signs.

He sought to energize apathetic young voters with splashy campaign videos showing him lifting weights in tight undershirts at the gym.

“The government cannot be won without us,” Ojeda said at an election night event alongside Delgado.

Exit polls by four prominent polling agencies showed Orsi leading his rival with 42%-44% of the vote, falling short of the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff on Nov. 24, reflecting voter apathy in the civilized presidential race between rivals whose priorities overlap.

The polls showed Delgado clinching 27-28% of the vote.

Electoral officials reported a turnout of 89% of 2.7 million eligible voters in Uruguay, widely considered a model democracy and bastion of stability where voting in presidential and congressional contests is compulsory.

The electoral contest has largely focused on the rise in homicides and robberies, with the governing coalition advocating a tough-on-crime approach and the liberal coalition seeking to increase the state’s role in security matters.

Over its 15 years in power, the Broad Front presided over robust economic growth and socially liberal laws that raised the tiny country’s global profile with the pioneering legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage and marijuana for recreational use. Uruguay has also developed one of the world’s greenest grids, powered by 98% renewable energy.

With Orsi’s working-class roots, casual wear and promise to eschew many of the benefits enjoyed by heads of state, voters appeared to endorse a candidate with the same folksy appeal as former President José “Pepe” Mujica.

The eccentric former guerrilla and present-day chrysanthemum farmer helped spearhead Uruguay’s transformation into the continent’s most socially liberal country during his 2010-2015 presidency.

Now 89, Mujica is battling esophageal cancer, but he still managed to cast his ballot in Montevideo on Sunday. Arriving to vote in a wheelchair, he was quickly swarmed by reporters.

“We need to support democracy, not because it is perfect, but because humans have not yet invented anything better,” he told journalists.

The presidential campaigns have played out in Uruguay without the vitriolic insults and personal attacks seen next door in economically dysfunctional Argentina or in politically polarized Brazil.

“In a way, Uruguay has been boring, but boring in this sense is very good,” said Juan Cruz Díaz, a political analyst who runs the Cefeidas consultancy group in Buenos Aires. “We’ve seen so many dramatic changes in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia and suddenly we face elections in Uruguay in which there is a general consensus, there’s stability.”

More divisive than the race itself was a constitutional referendum that would have overhauled Uruguay’s social security system by lowering the retirement age, boosting minimum payouts and transferring Uruguayans’ privately managed savings to a government-run trust.

Exit polls indicated that voters rejected the radical $23 billion proposal, which would have expanded the fiscal deficit and spooked markets.

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DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina

TORONTO – When a severe tropical cyclone hit New Zealand in February 2023, it left thousands on the country’s North Island without internet or cellphone service for nearly a week, as major roads carrying vital fibre optic cables were washed out.

Of residents who managed to retain an internet connection amid Cyclone Gabrielle, many relied on a lifeline that didn’t even exist just a few years earlier: SpaceX’s satellite internet service known as Starlink.

The company, which provides internet service through a constellation of thousands of satellites orbiting the globe, has seen significant uptake in New Zealand since launching there in 2021 — especially among rural communities — which helped keep users connected after the storm.

Bronwyn Howell, a telecommunications policy researcher at New Zealand’s Victoria University of Wellington, said 14 per cent of rural households in New Zealandare connected to satellite, almost solely driven by Starlink.

“Satellite is the gift that keeps on giving,” said Howell.

“The game is changing.”

The technology seems poised for liftoff in Canada, too.

As the future of connectivity via satellite continues to take shape, industry watchers say its growth could have significant implications for solving resiliency challenges, improving connectivity in rural and remote communities, and increasing competition in Canada’s telecom sector.

Academics, industry executives and regulatory officials gathered in Toronto on Oct. 16 for a conference hosted by the Ivey Business School, which delved into the role that satellite technology can play in Canadian telecommunications.

“Satellite is not a niche technology. It’s not just the technology that fills in some of the hard-to-reach parts, it’s a technology that cuts across the entire telecom agenda,” CRTC vice-chairperson Adam Scott said during the conference.

“The better satellite technology becomes the more attractive an option it could be to customers. Maybe not for everyone, but for some, including some who are not accustomed to having much competition or choice at all.”

Howell said satellite’s introduction in New Zealand has marked “the end of natural monopoly” for connectivity in rural communities.

“Now, in fact, many of the rural areas have better competition than some of the peri-urban and suburban areas, because they have a real and viable choice of satellite service that works,” she said.

“The strategic options are now much wider.”

In June, the federal government launched a consultation into expanding wireless services through satellite technology, with Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne hailing it as “the next frontier where Canadians will be able to use their current phone … to have absolute connectivity.”

Champagne also said in an interview at the time that with natural disasters on the rise, satellite connections could serve as a backup when traditional networks go down due to power outages.

The government’s study is set to wrap up this month, with new regulatory rules expected to be announced in the coming months and in place by April 2025, said Andre Arbour, director general of telecommunications and internet policy at Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.

“It can be invaluable, and maybe the only option in the wake of some type of natural disaster when the traditional infrastructure is damaged and being repaired,” he said.

In the meantime, some Canadian carriers are already working on development.

Rogers Communications Inc. announced partnerships last year with SpaceX and Lynk Global to deliver satellite-to-phone connectivity across Canada. By last December, Rogers said it has passed a key milestone by completing a test call using Lynk’s low-earth orbit satellites and its own wireless spectrum.

Telus Corp. also said it successfully trialled the technology in late 2023 in partnership with Montreal-based telecom provider TerreStar Solutions Inc. and non-terrestrial network service provider Skylo.

Last month, Ottawa announced a $2.14-billion loan to satellite operator Telesat to help that company build its broadband satellite constellation, called Lightspeed. The government said Lightspeed would enable people in the most remote parts of the country, including in Indigenous communities, mines and forestry companies, to access cheaper, more reliable internet.

The first of an initial 198 satellites is scheduled to launch in 2026.

Michèle Beck, Telesat’s senior vice-president of Canadian sales, said the technology is “creating a level of resiliency that we’ve never seen before.”

“It can be used anywhere in Canada, as long as you have an antenna to land in. It’s fungible,” she said.

“You can configure it where you need it at any particular time. It’s an insurance that would allow you then to provide that continuity where you need it.”

She highlighted another advantage of the technology when it comes to trying to prevent mass outages — individual satellites are spread out across a constellation.

“You don’t have a big fat target in the sky,” said Beck.

“You’ve got many, many satellites creating this network and if one or two gets taken out or denied, jammed, you still have hundreds more to complete the links.”

In Northern Canada, where some remote communities have a history of connectivity challenges such as slow or unreliable speeds, high prices and data caps, many have pointed to satellites as a potential solution, said Rob McMahon, associate professor of media and technology at the University of Alberta.

Speaking at the Ivey conference, McMahon shared research surrounding customer experiences from two communities in the Northwest Territories, which showed Starlink users tended to report fewer hiccups than customers of other broadband services.

But McMahon noted limitations to the technology. Starlink, in particular, currently has a limited customer base — it became available in Canada in 2021 — and may see declines in speed or quality of service as uptake grows, he said.

Consumer costs are also still relatively high, with the company charging $140 per month for service and $499 for hardware in Canada.

“Reliability is somewhat unclear. There’s no local technicians to provide support if the service goes down, for example,” said McMahon.

Arbour added satellite shouldn’t be seen as a full substitute for 4G or 5G communications. He said the departmenthas received complaints about “dead zones” where satellite internet doesn’t seem to work, even in centralized locations.

“It’s not in the middle of Hudson Bay,” he said. “It’s not too far from the (Greater Toronto Area), actually.”

Howell said those concerns echo some of the lessons learned thus far from New Zealand’s experience with satellite.

She said governments and regulators shouldn’t abandon their focus on improving service of traditional broadband networks in order to see satellite take off.

“There are going to be very different options created for a handful of consumers at the geographic periphery of society, but it doesn’t take away the importance of all of the other stuff that we’ve all been working on for the last so many years,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 27, 2024.

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