, Sanguinetti,
Nancy Reagan, and
Marta Canessa on the
White House, 1986. On 25 November 1984,
general elections were held. Sanguinetti won 31.2% of the votes, defeating the best PN candidate,
Alberto Zumarán; thus on 1 March 1985 he was sworn in as president with a 5-year term substituting the temporary president,
Rafael Addiego, who had in turn substituted the military president,
Gregorio Álvarez, on the previous 12 February. The ceremony was attended by 72 foreign representatives as an expression of support from the international community towards that new era in Uruguayan politics. (At the time, Sanguinetti had been unwilling to participate in an office-conferring ceremony together with Álvarez, and thus the interim arrangement with Addiego was worked out with the agreement of the parties concerned, but in later years Álvarez found a not so unlikely defender in Sanguinetti, who argued that Álvarez's legal troubles since the coming of the
Broad Front government in 2005 were unnecessarily one-sided, since known former
Tupamaro insurgents were being ignored by
Uruguayan justice.) Considered at the time a progressive politician in political questions and more conservative in economic questions, Sanguinetti managed to rehabilitate the image of a party that included a great variety of ideological diversity, the more conservative sectors of which had supported the coup d'état in 1973. He immediately lifted the ban on political parties and leaders that had actively opposed the dictatorship and signed an amnesty for political prisoners. With respect to foreign relations, Sanguinetti re-launched relations with Spain and re-established contacts with communist countries. In the nearer geographic arena, on 26 May 1987, and as a colophon to several preparatory meetings, he signed the Montevideo Agreement with his colleague,
Raúl Alfonsín. This agreement was decisive in giving an impulse to regional economic integration according to the objectives outlined in the South American Integration Association (ALADI). Alfonsín had already been negotiating an ambitious agreement to dismantle tariffs in bilateral trade with the Brazilian
José Sarney; now, Sanguinetti was included in an open field project that adopted a three-country shape and that gained impulse from the summit of the three presidents which the Uruguayan had organized in Colonia on 6 February 1988. With the inclusion of
Paraguay, all this work led to the creation of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) in 1991. In the economic area, Sanguinetti's Government had the reduction of the
USD $510 million foreign debt as one of its most important objectives. This is an enormous figure which is close to the level of national production. Likewise, Sanguinetti was an active member of the Support Group (Uruguay, Peru, Brazil and Argentina) of the Contadora Group (Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama), an informal consultative forum dedicated to exploring preventive measures against the expansion of armed conflicts in Central America, which, in December 1986 decided to merge with the so-called Group of Eight, which in turn was called the Río Group in October 1990 coinciding with its expansion to include
Chile,
Ecuador,
Bolivia and
Paraguay. Sanguinetti presided the II Group of Eight Meeting, in Punta del Este on 29 October 1988. In his first presidential term, the Uruguayan economy, which had suffered from a deep depression until 1985, registered positive indicators with production growth, a reduction in inflation, stabilization of unemployment and an increase in exports. The confrontation with trade unions -which demanded separation from the IMF and non-payment of the national debt- was compensated with opening up agreements among political parties to strengthen the consensus between the parties in order to bring forward legislation which was in the general interest. The result of this consensus was the National Agreement which was signed on 1 April 1986 by PC, PN, the left-wing Broad Front (FA) and the conservative Unión Cívica (UC). Towards the end of his presidency, in spite of the agreements reached for its re-financing, Uruguay's foreign debt kept on increasing, always slightly below GDP, which was also reduced to a virtually nonexistent growth rate. Inflation also experienced a strong increase and 1990 ended with a 130% inflation rate. A very particular aspect of his first term in office was the handling of the military issues. Uruguay had endured 12 long years of military dictatorship and the transition to democracy was very hard. Many opposition leaders and human-right organizations fought for truth and justice, and hundreds of cases were brought to the courts; but the military refused to cooperate, a political crisis was about to take place and, at the end of 1986, the very controversial
Law on the Expiration of the Punitive Claims of the State was passed by the Parliament. On 1 March 1990, Sanguinetti handed over the Presidency to
Luis Alberto Lacalle, the PN candidate who had won the
elections on 26 November 1989. Sanguinetti remained committed to journalism and to academic activities as well as to the internal politics of his party as the leader of the Batllist Forum, which had a Social Democratic ideology, the most important faction of PC along with
Batllismo Unido, headed by
Jorge Batlle. Among the several prominent politicians who served in his government can be mentioned:
Enrique V. Iglesias,
Antonio Marchesano,
Ricardo Zerbino,
Juan Vicente Chiarino,
Adela Reta,
Hugo Fernández Faingold,
Luis Brezzo,
Alejandro Atchugarry and
Ariel Davrieux. Opposition leader
Wilson Ferreira Aldunate played a key role in the definition of the most difficult issues for the democratic institutions. ==Second presidency (1995–2000)==