President José Mujica said Uruguay “must always talk and maintain close relations with Argentina” following the recent controversy that flared up when he was caught by an open microphone calling Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez “the old lady” and her deceased husband Néstor Kirchner “the one-eyed.”
Uruguay’ financial and political stability is backfiring as the Central bank is forced to buy a massive inflow of foreign capital which in turn creates an abundance of Pesos that need to be absorbed to control inflation and support the competitive edge of the country’s exports.
Last Wednesday April 17 ‘Splendour of the Seas’ and its 1.940 passengers marked the end of the 2012/13 cruise season for Uruguay, which took off on 23 October and totalled 222 calls between the port of Montevideo and Punta del Este sea resort.
Sooner than expected Argentine President Cristina Fernandez seems to have accepted her Uruguayan peer Jose Mujica’s apologies following his coarse words: “this old lady is worse than the one-eyed man” to refer to the Argentine leader and her late husband Nestor Kirchner.
“We’re optimistic about Sunday’s election and the future of Paraguay if we can agree on long term state policies, but something is for certain: democracy in Paraguay is here to stay” said Ricardo Caballero Aquino, Chargé d’affaires of the Paraguayan embassy in Montevideo who was also positive about future relations with Unasur and Mercosur.
Representatives from several Latinamerican and Caribbean countries before the Organization of American States recognized on Wednesday Nicolas Maduro as elected president of Venezuela. Nicaragua, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Uruguay among others congratulated the new head of state and praised the Venezuelan people for their massive and peaceful turnout last Sunday for the historic voting day.
Argentina and Uruguay presidents could hold an unofficial meeting next Friday in Caracas when they attend the taking office ceremony of Venezuelan president next Friday, according to Montevideo diplomatic sources.
Relations inside the Uruguayan cabinet remain tense with some ministers in non-talking terms even when President Jose Mujica cancelled the Monday full ministerial turnout for three specific areas, security, social affairs and production meetings, which function every two weeks.
The ongoing controversy in Uruguay as to how ‘modest’ or ‘bad’ was this summer’s season has received some facts to support the discussion: supermarket sales in Punta del Este-Maldonado the main resort area along the Atlantic coast contracted 15%, compared to the previous year, while overall in the whole of the country sales were down 2%.
Uruguay’s Deputy Foreign minister Roberto Conde is scheduled to travel to Buenos Aires this week as part of President Jose Mujica’s administration efforts to rebuild bilateral relations with Argentina following his ‘coarse, jail-slang’ descriptions of president Cristina Fernandez and her late husband Nestor Kirchner, which were refuted as ‘unacceptable and denigrating”.