The year 2023 will end with a negative balance for Uruguay overall. The right-wing government under Luis Lacalle has fully followed his plan to govern for the “gold scam”, as he himself called it, in a kind of re-paraphrasing of the spillover theory.
The year 2024 has not started, but the election campaign has. Next year in Uruguay the new president, his vice-president and the composition of the new parliament will be elected, and at least two referendums are also at stake: one on social security reform, promoted by the PIT-CNT union of individual workers; Where is he
Frente Amplio granted its sectors freedom of action.
So far, the referendum has received little support from the center-left opposition, which wants to return to government on March 1, 2025. The second referendum was proposed by the right-wing extremist Cabildo Abierto formation on debt restructuring.
Poverty is still the face of boys and girls in Uruguay. A structural problem, silent, latent, but which later explodes in all areas of society, where we watch with amazement its consequences and continue to deny its causes.
Gustavo de Armas, strategic planning advisor to the Office of the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Uruguay, presented the report entitled “Combating poverty in Uruguay by 2030. Ethical commitment and state of development.” The research was motivated by the first of the Sustainable Development Goals – ending poverty – to which Uruguay joined in 2015.
The UN adviser stressed that Uruguay is “absolutely extreme” in terms of child poverty, despite having “the most developed welfare state in the region”. He pointed out that 44% of the poor population is under 18 years old and that the situation mainly affects women, who are usually the heads of the most vulnerable households.
In fact, 68% of the 88,000 poor households in Uruguay are headed by women. Only half of them are employed, and this is “coupled with a very high level of commitment to unpaid work”. Therefore, De Armas emphasized that “reducing poverty also means working hard to integrate women into the labor market.”
Another pandemic that kills in silence is the problem of suicide. The happiest country in Latin America and the 28th in the world where two people commit suicide every day, bringing the number to 818 in 2022. This year does not promise any significant improvement in the numbers.
Always at the top of the rankings for whiskey, cocaine and psychotropic drug use. High suicide rates, low birth rates. What is happening in Uruguay? Are you happy with this quiet country selling itself to the world for political and institutional stability? Is democratic quality sufficient to survive when young people emigrate or commit suicide?
Or do they not want to have a family?
In what index, in what ranking, in what number is the quality of life, humanity and the holistic development of the being measured?
Scandals and corruption have reached the front pages of international newspapers and the population has become accustomed to a new case coming to light week after week. In addition, there are domestic scandals that have little international significance and impact, but which equally deteriorate the institutional quality.
Since the beginning of the Lacalle government, scandals have affected Uruguay and not the government, as is often said, because it is the government that produces them. Accommodation, clientelism, nepotism, abuse of functions, espionage against opponents, provision of a passport for one of the most wanted drug traffickers in the region, an espionage plot,
Stalking and threatening victims of a pedophile and so on, the list goes on.
The year 2023 began with a severe drought that left half of Uruguay's population without drinking water. The salt levels reached such levels that the water heaters and the taps broke and the consumption was not healthy at all. Still, the government had a responsibility to do nothing. Even senior leaders called for prayers for rain. The population had to buy bottled water
complete any household task, be it cooking, hygiene, etc.
The topic of drug trafficking attracted great attention in 2023 due to all its characteristics and facets. At regional level, the Sebastián Marset case took center stage. Based on audio leaks, it was revealed that the government had hatched a conspiracy to lie in an interview with former Interior and International Relations ministers about the issuance of the passport on drug trafficking charges and that they already knew who Marset was.
This led to a series of resignations in several ministerial portfolios, but without any sign of self-criticism on the part of the resignations who were involved and are now being investigated by the judiciary, let alone by President Lacalle.
Then we became not only a transit country in the region, but also a collection country. This implies a larger amount of drugs in the area and therefore a larger dispute between the gangs over the business. This dispute means gaining territory, power and money. This is earned through corruption with the authorities, arms trafficking, and then through the power of the Orb.
Bullet violence seen in several neighborhoods of Montevideo. Shootings, homicides, reckonings, dismemberment of corpses and/or setting on fire. What was seen in the series and films or can be found in the red chronicle.
In the face of this crisis, the new Interior Minister Diego Martinelli said: “The good news is that they are concentrating on certain areas of the city.” In the last week of December, there were a worrying number of 15 recorded homicides, and there was a riot in the country's main prison in which (at the time of writing this note) six prisoners died, dozens were injured, and entire cells were set on fire.
Uruguay is slowly bleeding. Society, politicians and more don't seem to care about the changes that are taking place. A sepia photo is the memory in which society is anchored as an unchanging reality and an ever-improving past.
The Frente Amplio has already begun to show certain tensions in its Internal Party, which has four candidates. Its three mayors: Yamandú Orsi (Canelones), Carolina Cosse (Montevideo), Andrés Lima (Salto) and Mario Bergara. Orsi is in the lead and is the favorite within the Frente Amplio, according to polls and even in a possible runoff between Lacalle's Delfin and Álvaro Delgado of the National Party.
Given all that goes beyond but also affects political parties, few proposals are seen, heard and read to break this pendulum of reactionary and progressive cycles.
Meanwhile, President Lacalle spent Christmas in Antarctica, in those bouts of divinity that happen to him quite often. Like when he spent Christmas in the Congo. Despite what is being said, the president's positive image remains at a fairly high level.
Wallets continue to creak, finding a job is an arduous task, security has noticeably worsened, you still have to work five years to retire, childhoods remain impoverished, prisons are a breeding ground for more violence, white-collar crime is rampant spread. .
Oh, but what beautiful beaches we have!
* Degree in Psychology, University of the Republic, Uruguay. Member of the International Network of Chairs, Institutions and Personalities on the Study of Public Debt (RICDP). Analyst associated with the Latin American Center for Strategic Analysis (CLAE, segura.la)
Source: https://estrategia.la/2023/12/29/ultimo-ano-de-lacalle-balance-de-gobierno-desbalance-de-pais/
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