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The Jason Raleigh Government
Jason Raleigh Government (1972-1980)
In keeping with the Coalition’s tradition of avoiding bombastic leaders, Jason Raleigh was a dour, serious man, a respected MP who had represented the country faithfully as Foreign Minister, and who could claim the unique quality of being the most conservative member of the Alliance and the most liberal member of the Conservatives simultaneously. His Cabinet would be the largest of the National Coalition era with a cumbersome 13 members, but it would also be the last to attempt to achieve equilibrium between different factions, an issue that would drag out the selection of ministers for several months into his government.
The first appointments sought to close the wounds opened by Stephen Dancy: Conservatives would lose their plurality of Cabinet posts; the Popular Party would not only retain the Speakership, but regain the Defense ministry; finally, Christian Democrats and Alliance members would occupy key posts in the line of succession, with Elizabeth Hess becoming the first ever Deputy Prime Minister and long-time Alliance MP Jonathan Miller would replace Stephen Dancy as Chief Whip. Despite their reduced number, Conservatives kept control of key ministries, reaffirming their control over economic policy with the reinstatement of Alan Smith as Economy Minister and keeping control over law enforcement – of special interest to Conservatives as the coalition veered towards harsher anti-communism – as Daniel Steward was appointed Justice Minister.
Subsequent appointments would come easier, with two notable exceptions: Damian Guevara broke ranks with the National Coalition in 1972 following his unceremonious dismissal by Dancy and refused to return to the fold when offered half of the ministry Dancy had stripped from him, and the appointment of Dancy himself nearly fell through when he tried to secure the still-vacant Labour brief for a Conservative intent on jumping ship to the Union prior to making it public.
By June of 1972, the cabinet was complete, and it would serve as a testament to Raleigh’s method that it would not just survive throughout his tenure, but would in fact outlive him, as his successor would have to live with simply rearranging the names, unable to find a better balance between the parties. But Raleigh would find himself unable to provide more beyond political stability, as the outbreak of the oil crisis and the worldwide economic slump left them with little room for anything more than basic stewardship of the state.
Despite the difficulties, the telecommunications reforms continued at full speed, culminating in the appointment of Alfred Woodstock, founder of Atlantic TV, as Telecommunications Minister and the continued deregulation of the industry. Although the ban on Argentine content stayed on the books, the reality was that the enforcement was lax, and focused primarily on products and artists that were deemed “problematic” either due to their association with the left or Argentina’s Peronist party; where enforcement remained inflexible was in the ban on Argentine broadcasts, with considerable investment placed on the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure that made it among the most modern in the region, with the added benefit of making it harder for clandestine rebroadcasts of Argentine television.
Much of this work coincided with what some hoped was a definitive return to democracy for their neighbors across the River Plate, but the death of Peron in July dashed those hopes: concern over an uptick in violence in Argentina allowed the National Coalition to return their largest majority ever, reducing the number of independents to just 9 seats, but this new majority built on the back of rising tension and generalized fear would grind the government to a halt as it struggled to keep up with the news out of Buenos Aires.
The 1976 coup jolted it awake, but it would take Damian Guevara’s insurgent 1978 campaign – obtaining a historic number of leftist MPs in the National Coalition era and even managing to spar with Raleigh as leader of the opposition – to spur it into more decisive action. Unfortunately for Guevara’s Popular Socialist Party, this decisive action was aimed at them as Raleigh attempted to revive the sentiment that allowed Holcomb to bully the other parties into supporting him. While he obtained some success, and although he was able to thoroughly defang Guevara’s party as an effective opposition, the damage had already been done: ministers unaccustomed to scrutiny were suddenly forced to answer to enthusiastic MPs, many of whom had entered politics through the River Star, and in the year and a half they were able to hold the government accountable, no fewer than 3 major corruption scandals would come to light.
The first was, in hindsight, almost comically minor: Damian Guevara capitalized on his own experience with the brief to corner Stephen Dancy, and he managed to get the controversial minister on the record admitting to using funds meant for constituency services in distant districts to pay for the rent on his Montevideo apartment instead of maintaining his offices in Salto.
The second scandal was more substantial, but Guevara complained to the press that it seemed that they practically expected corruption from the Popular Party as he held up financial statements documenting MPs cashing “supplemental salaries” from either the armed forces or the Oriental Railroad Trust even as they held government posts responsible for oversight of one or the other.
The third scandal however would ultimately dash Raleigh’s hopes of matching Crowley’s longevity: the PSP, with help from the River Star, managed to obtain documents from Atlantic Television that seemed to indicate that Alfred Woodstock had in fact failed to fully divest from the company he’d founded, and had on the contrary used his position as Telecommunications Minister to enrich his former company and, through dividends hidden in an allegedly blind trust, make money off his own administrative decisions.
Raleigh had hoped that stripping Guevara of his parliamentary party and reducing the Left to non-parliamentary opposition would put an end to the successive scandals, but the former minister’s decision to take his party underground would sow the seeds of the most disastrous scandal to befall the Raleigh government, even if it didn’t involve him personally: on a warm summer evening in early 1980, right-wing Argentine paramilitaries descended on a rural camp Guevara was staying at, slaughtering the one-time Alliance minister and several of his friends, colleagues and Argentine guests (ERP activists, and the actual targets of the attack).
While Raleigh and his Defense Minister Daniel Blanco responded forcefully to the attack, raising tensions with Argentina to never-before-seen heights, the shocking revelation that Justice Minister Daniel Steward had conspired with the paramilitaries was too much for the embattled Prime Minister to swallow, and he would resign in disgrace by August, but not before ensuring that Steward would face jail time for what the outgoing PM called “a most heinous betrayal of our country” and he would be one of the pallbearers at Guevara’s funeral. He would be succeeded by fellow Conservative Alan Smith, but the party would not be able to keep the ministries that were embroiled in the successive controversies for what would turn out to be the last National Coalition government that united all the non-communist parties under one banner.
But as its audience became national, its relationship to power shifted, away from the dogmatically genteel relationship Montevideo's multiculturalism required and towards a broader effort to satisfy as many Oriental readers and solidify them as National Coalition supporters. By the 1960s, its transformation as mouthpiece for the Oriental elite was complete, and it would become a key piece in the Coalition's media strategy as it sought to keep the Oriental population in line.
In keeping with the Coalition’s tradition of avoiding bombastic leaders, Jason Raleigh was a dour, serious man, a respected MP who had represented the country faithfully as Foreign Minister, and who could claim the unique quality of being the most conservative member of the Alliance and the most liberal member of the Conservatives simultaneously. His Cabinet would be the largest of the National Coalition era with a cumbersome 13 members, but it would also be the last to attempt to achieve equilibrium between different factions, an issue that would drag out the selection of ministers for several months into his government.
The first appointments sought to close the wounds opened by Stephen Dancy: Conservatives would lose their plurality of Cabinet posts; the Popular Party would not only retain the Speakership, but regain the Defense ministry; finally, Christian Democrats and Alliance members would occupy key posts in the line of succession, with Elizabeth Hess becoming the first ever Deputy Prime Minister and long-time Alliance MP Jonathan Miller would replace Stephen Dancy as Chief Whip. Despite their reduced number, Conservatives kept control of key ministries, reaffirming their control over economic policy with the reinstatement of Alan Smith as Economy Minister and keeping control over law enforcement – of special interest to Conservatives as the coalition veered towards harsher anti-communism – as Daniel Steward was appointed Justice Minister.
Subsequent appointments would come easier, with two notable exceptions: Damian Guevara broke ranks with the National Coalition in 1972 following his unceremonious dismissal by Dancy and refused to return to the fold when offered half of the ministry Dancy had stripped from him, and the appointment of Dancy himself nearly fell through when he tried to secure the still-vacant Labour brief for a Conservative intent on jumping ship to the Union prior to making it public.
By June of 1972, the cabinet was complete, and it would serve as a testament to Raleigh’s method that it would not just survive throughout his tenure, but would in fact outlive him, as his successor would have to live with simply rearranging the names, unable to find a better balance between the parties. But Raleigh would find himself unable to provide more beyond political stability, as the outbreak of the oil crisis and the worldwide economic slump left them with little room for anything more than basic stewardship of the state.
Despite the difficulties, the telecommunications reforms continued at full speed, culminating in the appointment of Alfred Woodstock, founder of Atlantic TV, as Telecommunications Minister and the continued deregulation of the industry. Although the ban on Argentine content stayed on the books, the reality was that the enforcement was lax, and focused primarily on products and artists that were deemed “problematic” either due to their association with the left or Argentina’s Peronist party; where enforcement remained inflexible was in the ban on Argentine broadcasts, with considerable investment placed on the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure that made it among the most modern in the region, with the added benefit of making it harder for clandestine rebroadcasts of Argentine television.
Much of this work coincided with what some hoped was a definitive return to democracy for their neighbors across the River Plate, but the death of Peron in July dashed those hopes: concern over an uptick in violence in Argentina allowed the National Coalition to return their largest majority ever, reducing the number of independents to just 9 seats, but this new majority built on the back of rising tension and generalized fear would grind the government to a halt as it struggled to keep up with the news out of Buenos Aires.
The 1976 coup jolted it awake, but it would take Damian Guevara’s insurgent 1978 campaign – obtaining a historic number of leftist MPs in the National Coalition era and even managing to spar with Raleigh as leader of the opposition – to spur it into more decisive action. Unfortunately for Guevara’s Popular Socialist Party, this decisive action was aimed at them as Raleigh attempted to revive the sentiment that allowed Holcomb to bully the other parties into supporting him. While he obtained some success, and although he was able to thoroughly defang Guevara’s party as an effective opposition, the damage had already been done: ministers unaccustomed to scrutiny were suddenly forced to answer to enthusiastic MPs, many of whom had entered politics through the River Star, and in the year and a half they were able to hold the government accountable, no fewer than 3 major corruption scandals would come to light.
The first was, in hindsight, almost comically minor: Damian Guevara capitalized on his own experience with the brief to corner Stephen Dancy, and he managed to get the controversial minister on the record admitting to using funds meant for constituency services in distant districts to pay for the rent on his Montevideo apartment instead of maintaining his offices in Salto.
The second scandal was more substantial, but Guevara complained to the press that it seemed that they practically expected corruption from the Popular Party as he held up financial statements documenting MPs cashing “supplemental salaries” from either the armed forces or the Oriental Railroad Trust even as they held government posts responsible for oversight of one or the other.
The third scandal however would ultimately dash Raleigh’s hopes of matching Crowley’s longevity: the PSP, with help from the River Star, managed to obtain documents from Atlantic Television that seemed to indicate that Alfred Woodstock had in fact failed to fully divest from the company he’d founded, and had on the contrary used his position as Telecommunications Minister to enrich his former company and, through dividends hidden in an allegedly blind trust, make money off his own administrative decisions.
Raleigh had hoped that stripping Guevara of his parliamentary party and reducing the Left to non-parliamentary opposition would put an end to the successive scandals, but the former minister’s decision to take his party underground would sow the seeds of the most disastrous scandal to befall the Raleigh government, even if it didn’t involve him personally: on a warm summer evening in early 1980, right-wing Argentine paramilitaries descended on a rural camp Guevara was staying at, slaughtering the one-time Alliance minister and several of his friends, colleagues and Argentine guests (ERP activists, and the actual targets of the attack).
While Raleigh and his Defense Minister Daniel Blanco responded forcefully to the attack, raising tensions with Argentina to never-before-seen heights, the shocking revelation that Justice Minister Daniel Steward had conspired with the paramilitaries was too much for the embattled Prime Minister to swallow, and he would resign in disgrace by August, but not before ensuring that Steward would face jail time for what the outgoing PM called “a most heinous betrayal of our country” and he would be one of the pallbearers at Guevara’s funeral. He would be succeeded by fellow Conservative Alan Smith, but the party would not be able to keep the ministries that were embroiled in the successive controversies for what would turn out to be the last National Coalition government that united all the non-communist parties under one banner.
Jason Raleigh Cabinet (1972-1980)
- Prime Minister – Jason Raleigh (Conservative)
- Speaker – Adrian Ramos (Popular)
- Deputy Prime Minister – Catherine Hess (Christian Democrat)
- Chief Whip – Jonathan Miller (Alliance)
- Economy Minister – Alan Smith (Conservative)
- Foreign Minister – Tom Weaver (Alliance)
- Justice Minister – David Steward (Conservative)
- Health Minister – Marcus Meadows (Christian Democrat)
- Education Minister – Margaret Dawson (Alliance)
- Defense Minister – Daniel Blanco (Popular)
- Labour Minister – Stephen Sanders (Christian Democrat)
- Social Services Minister – Stephen Dancy (National Union)
- Telecommunications Minister – Alfred Woodstock (Conservative)
El País - An Institution unto itself
As the second oldest newspaper in Platte, El País has always enjoyed a reputation as a stately, respectable platform which provided the country's spanish-speaking community with the same professional reporting that the Telegraph offered. But its position as the Oriental newspaper presented them with an opportunity that the Telegraph would shy away from: throughout its history, it has proven to be one of the most plural and diverse papers in terms of political slant, occasionally providing even critics of the Communist Party ban a platform to share their views with a wider audience.But as its audience became national, its relationship to power shifted, away from the dogmatically genteel relationship Montevideo's multiculturalism required and towards a broader effort to satisfy as many Oriental readers and solidify them as National Coalition supporters. By the 1960s, its transformation as mouthpiece for the Oriental elite was complete, and it would become a key piece in the Coalition's media strategy as it sought to keep the Oriental population in line.
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