Ex-guerrilla is presidential front-runner in Uruguay

A former guerrilla and committed socialist who twice escaped from prison during the country's 12-year dictatorship and was convicted of killing a policeman in 1971, Mujica is now a grandfatherly figure who captures imaginations with his blunt, salty language and his commitment to changing the system, this time from within.

“In Uruguay, the congenital illness of the left — a lack of unity —can be overcome,” Mujica declared as he closed his campaign before a crowd that jammed the capital's main street Wednesday night.

Mujica won the primary of the ruling Broad Front coalition and is expected to get the most votes Sunday, but not quite the majority needed for a first-round victory.

He'll likely face a Nov. 25 runoff against former president Luis Alberto Lacalle of the center-right National Party. Trailing far back in third is the right-wing Colorado Party's Pedro Bordaberry, son of former dictator Juan M. Bordaberry, who is under house arrest for crimes during the regime he installed with a 1973 coup.

If Mujica wins the presidency, it will be seen as another rejection of unfettered capitalism in a region where many now see government efforts to follow Washington's economic and political prescriptions as social failures.

He promises to lead Uruguay's 3.5 million people into the “first world,” transforming an economy based on agricultural exports and social spending to one that produces value-added goods and high technology, like Finland.

“The country must be open to the rest of the world,” he said, promising to foster relations in places “with a turban or without, in English, in Mandarin, or in whatever language.”

Many Uruguayans wonder how the 74-year-old self-described “hot head” with an ungovernable mop of silver-gray hair, a droopy mustache and a habitual twinkle in his eye can possibly follow the protocols of a head of state.

He has been challenging authority all his life, usually from the outside, and has played on his loose-lipped reputation by repeating “I tell you one thing, I tell you another,” as a disarming and ironic catch phrase that takes aim at political hypocrisy.

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