MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Argentina and Uruguay agree that integration and Mercosur are the priorities
Argentina and Uruguay foreign ministers agreed to hold twice a year meetings to address all issues in the bilateral agenda but with emphasis on integration and Mercosur which are 'our main concerns'. Susana Malcorra met with her peer Rodolfo Nin Novoa in Montevideo on Friday and after a several hours meeting made brief statements with no questions taken from journalists. Read full article
Comments
Disclaimer & comment rules”This defines the priority we assign to relations between brotherly countries”.
Feb 20th, 2016 - 10:49 am - Link - Report abuse 0Still the same old tripe.
Time and ACTIONS will tell.
Agreed Chris.
Feb 21st, 2016 - 02:26 am - Link - Report abuse 0This whole nauseating brotherly crap South American politicians keep preaching is a swindle. Integration in South America is so far behind the rest of the world but supposedly they have an even more special connection that others don't?
Go figure.
You'd be hard pressed to find two more similar countries than Australia had New Zealand but thankfully our politicians use grown up language to describe our relationship. We informally call each other cousins but that's it. We don't expect them to do something because there is a supposed family connection.
As for Uruguay, it is a shame it is squeezed between two very much larger neighbours. I can't understand why it has always followed a path of appeasement more than isolation. It could have become a Singapore or Switzerland or Panama by turning its back on the disorder of its neighbours and struck a divergent path.
I know you've first hand experience on the many problems Uruguay creates for itself but my advice would be to leave Mercosur and strike free trade deals with other countries. Increase inward migration to deepen the skill set. Promote English so the country is effectively bilingual. And then become the service/legal hub for the entire region.
Singapore did it within a generation.
In 1950, Singapore had a population of 1 million people. Uruguay had 2.25 million. In the early 1990s Singapore matched Uruguay's population and now has 2 million more people than Uruguay's 3.5 million.
Singapore has 0.4% of Uruguay's land area!
@ 2 Skip
Feb 21st, 2016 - 11:13 am - Link - Report abuse 0Excellent analysis EXCEPT for: Singapore is Asian, has the Asian work ethic but more importantly has a very well educated population. They are also governed by educated, intelligent, people.
Uruguayans, at what would be expected to be the workforce level, are uneducated, illiterate, innumerate and 1.4M of them are on the tit that 'No Money Pepe' brought in and are therefore living the life of Riley on the backs of those who do work. Those lazy bastards get almost as much money a week as those employed in unskilled jobs by the government AND 'taxes' are stopped from their wages!
Uruguay cannot even understand WHY Singapore is so successful and has no chance of emulating them whilst the politicians of Uruguay are stupid commie bastards. They really do jibber-jabber on about 'brotherly love'.
I love living here, but I am already educated and through my own efforts, well off, so life here is good for us BUT I couldn't survive on the pittance those who do work are paid.
Such missed opportunities for the people. It really does frustrate me when I look at what my friends (mostly teachers) earn.
Chris
Feb 21st, 2016 - 11:54 am - Link - Report abuse 0I think there is something more to it than an Asian work ethic. Otherwise all of Asia would be richer than anywhere else. Once you take out Singapore and Japan then no other country really gets close to the development and wealth of countries such as UK, US, Canada, Australia, Germany etc.
Not saying there isn't a great work ethic but there needs to be more to support that.
Australia is about 10% Asian. Maybe 15% soon. And while our dental and medical and business schools are packed with first generation Asian-Australians, a funny thing has recently been noticed.
Asian tradies.
The drive to push their children to be lawyers and doctors and dentists wanes and they revert to the baseline of the existing population. So there is nothing in Asian culture that can't be harnessed in different cultures.
As to Singapore. You talk about their education level now. But you need to go back in their history to see how this started. This was policy of the government and seen as a pathway to development. It was deliberate. But it wasn't always thus. Compare to Malaysia, which Singapore joined for a while to see the difference. They pursued bumiputra as a way of advancing ethnic Malays while Singapore went colour blind in educating and advancing all.
I suppose the point I am trying to make is that Singapore chose to diverge from its neighbours while Uruguay chose to emulate and follow them.
I'm not staying it will. But it could have. There was nothing stopping it but itself.
There was nothing particularly special about Singapore in 1960. It took 5 decades to change that. It also took a lack of democracy.
Uruguay should I take advantage of Argentina's current amenability and Brazil's introspection to grasp the opportunity to stop repeating the cycle and strike out.
“Uruguay should I take advantage of Argentina's current amenability and Brazil's introspection to grasp the opportunity to stop repeating the cycle and strike out.”
Feb 21st, 2016 - 12:43 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I totally agree, but to do that the internecine war between Mulica and Vasquez in the senate needs to stop.
Mujica is a brooding, malevolent presence in the Senate and he needs to stop deliberately placing boulders in the way of progress or somebody needs to stop him if he doesn't.
I thought the UK political scene was ridiculous but they are Gods compared to this lot.
This thread proves Skip hates argies (already knew Chris does).
Feb 21st, 2016 - 03:33 pm - Link - Report abuse 0All along blasting me for wanting Argentina to isolate, that its a terrible idea, and here he is championing that tiny Uruguay do just that. hahaha.
Wow.... talk about Anglo will be anglo talk.
Chris
Feb 21st, 2016 - 09:05 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Did you once see me saying that Uruguay should “isolate” itself?
Here I am saying Urufuay should emulate Singapore..... I don't think isolate is a word that anyone would use with Singapore. This is where I refer to education again, I guess.
Anyway, yes I agree that politics is what holds Uruguay back. Mujica wasn't a great president for Uruguay. Any good points were outweighed by his bad multiple times over.
Singapore had to restrict democracy to really develop so perhaps it isn't as easy as I would hope with an active democracy. Sometimes in democracy you get visionaries and sometimes you get turkeys. Australia is going through a turkey phase as well. But I look at pragmatic leaders like Macri and see that sometimes someone with some vision can rise to the top. And Santos of Colombia is doing pretty well considering.
Perhaps Uruguay will be lucky and learn a lesson from Brazil when it hits the wall and this might shock them onto a different path.
I never read TTT's posts anymore, he is just incapable of moving on.
Feb 22nd, 2016 - 11:35 am - Link - Report abuse 0Uruguay has already hit the wall as this shows:
ANCAP, the government monopoly on fuels has lost U$S600M in 'trading' over four years and U$S300M has been 'misplaced' by our new crook of a Veep when he was the head of ANCAP, so Vasquez fired the 'new' head a Mujica placeman and has replaced him with a 47 YO female.
Oh shit! The macho cunts in both houses are up in arms and the opposition parties are dead against her!
The outgoing crook had no real education for the position. This woman has a Chemical Engineering degree from BsAs (that's the weak bit), a degree from Kingston in the UK in Strategic Finance Management, a degree from Harvard, was the President of the board for Shell, Mexico, the technical advisor and head of the Chamber of Commerce of the British Embassy in Mexico, she headed up the design and construction of the new gasification plant for Mexico and is fluent in Italian, jibber-jabber, English, Portuguese and another three languages I cannot remember.
Although a Uruguayo she is married to an Argentine farmer and has one boy and one girl. Obviously the extensive experience with Shell at the highest levels has overcome her weak chemical engineering degree.
The new gasification plant at MVD is woefully behind programme, as I understand it because the original contracts were simplistic and failed to nail the contractor to what was really required and he has been claiming extra money for doing what he was supposed to do. Usual FU by the administration of Pepe.
This woman is clearly the ideal candidate for the job but the children of the two houses (who are semi-literate at best) are threatening NOT to confirm her position! One cretin even went so far as to say 'but she's a woman', quick of him to spot that.
And that is what the stinking poor, all 1.4M of them on Pepe's tit have gotten the country into.
Commenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!