MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

If Mercosur is failing, “we are doing something wrong”, said Mujica

President elect Mujica wants to see inmates busy building homes

Uruguay’s president elect Jose Mujica who takes office Monday March first admitted that Mercosur is “failing” because “we are doing something wrong”, but was enthusiastic about Latinamerican integration and praised Argentina, a country where “Uruguayans are not foreigners”.

“Mercosur is failing because other Latinamerican countries are not crazy about joining the group and if this happens it is because we are doing something wrong” said Mujica a few hours before his official inauguration.

“We are a wonderful family (Mercosur) which wants to get together, and sometimes we manage, but we need to work on those aspects of integration and relations between blocks so that we can grow, expand, for example with arbitration mechanisms which guarantee a fluid Mercosur functioning”, added Mujica next to his Vice-president Danilo Astori.

Further on Mujica said that Argentina and Brazil have been called to play a key role in integration and in relations with other blocks, “such as the European”, pointing out that Latinamerica has a greater margin for unity than Europe: “we have common values, cultural background in spite of some minor differences”.

“Our commitment is to advance with the integration project” added the future president who in that context said it was difficult for him to consider Argentine as a foreign country: “we Uruguayans do not feel foreigners in Argentina and this applies the other way also”.

Mujica promised a period of close, frank, fraternal relations, “even greater than now and this has to be so because of geographic and historic reasons”, even when “we have our differences”.

In direct reference to the ongoing conflict over the pulp mill built by a Finnish company on the Uruguayan side of a shared river Mujica said “from our side we are most willing to solve differences, and if we can’t find a way out, at least let us leave it aside, to its circumscription, without influencing other common areas so we can keep advancing together”.

“We have many issues to address with Argentina and on which we have to work. This obviously includes the pulp issue, because if you can’t make paper and pulp without contamination, then we would have to say goodbye to paper and I don’t think the world is ready for that” he emphasized.

However much of the pending agenda will be addressed when “I meet with the Argentine president (Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner), very soon and this includes the pulp issue as one of the many points”.

Regarding the incoming administration’s immediate plans he mentioned a “home building impact program” and the recovery of the railway system.

“We have a shortage of 100.000 homes and I think that a good immediate solution is to have prisoners in jail help with that task. We have plenty of woods to timber and carpentry shops in jails to keep them busy. This will help address a double purpose: home building and less over crowded jails”, said Mujica.

He also mentioned he would ask for support from the Armed Forces that have the necessary infrastructure and the ovens to make bricks.

As to the railway system “it is essential to lower freight costs, we have grains, logs, cattle, cement that could be transported much cheaper by rail. For this we have overseas support from several countries and financial aid promised by multilateral organizations” said Mujica.

As to the long term, Mujica promised austerity, elimination of indigence, reduction of poverty to half in the next five years and boosting education, technology and culture, “to make Uruguayans more learned and more updated with the modern world”.