MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) -- A socialist riding a wave of leftist
                  renewal in Latin American politics overshadowed two top rivals Sunday as
                  Uruguayans voted for a president.

                  Tabare Vazquez, 59, of the Broad Front coalition, flashed the thumbs-up
                  signal, mobbed by supporters as he voted at a health clinic. A woman
                  leaped to kiss the frontrunner amid cheers of "Tabare! Tabare for
                  president!"

                  A medical doctor and former Montevideo mayor, Vazquez has harnessed
                  voter cynicism with Uruguay's two traditional parties, taking the government
                  to task for double-digit unemployment and not meeting health, housing and
                  educational needs.

                  Nonetheless, no candidate was expected to gain more than 50 percent of
                  the ballot for outright victory Sunday. The compulsory election by this South
                  American nation's 2.4 million voters was widely seen as a test of the new left
                  at the ballot box.

                  Second in the pre-election polls was Sen. Jorge Batlle, 73, of the centrist
                  ruling Colorado Party, while former president Luis Lacalle, 58 of the
                  center-right National Party, was expected to finish third.

                  Here as elsewhere in South America, voters are flirting with the left.
                  Argentina's center-left opposition Alliance won the Oct. 24 presidential
                  election. In Chile, Ricardo Lagos is favored by the polls to become the
                  country's first elected socialist in three decades, though a right-wing foe has
                  narrowed the as the Dec. 12 election approaches.

                  In Uruguay, the campaign has been characterized by talk about whether the
                  left has truly moderated since the Cold War-era.

                  Vazquez has proposed an "emergency" plan to spend more than $200
                  million to create tens of thousands of jobs. He vows to make the wealthier
                  pay more income tax while exempting those who earn less than $1,200 a
                  month.

                  He hopes to turn around a listless economy marked by a 10 percent
                  unemployment rate he blames on the strict fiscal policies of President Julio
                  Maria Sanguinetti.

                  Batlle, an economist, charges that the Broad Front, a diverse coalition
                  founded in 1971, includes fringe Marxist elements that could disrupt or even
                  derail the free-market financial policies already in place.

                  Vazquez dismisses characterizations that he is an unreformed Marxist,
                  responding in an interview this past week, "No, I am eclectic."'

                    Copyright 1999 The Associated Press.