MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lacalle Pou: “it is not true that security has worsened” in Uruguay

“We should not be obtuse and say that everything is fine, because it is a fallacy that no one would believe,” Lacalle admitted.

Uruguayan president Luis Lacalle Pou addressed on Sunday public security and replied to criticism from opposition left-wing party Frente Amplio’s (Broad Front).

At an annual assembly of an agrarian society in western Montevideo, the president said that “we should not be obtuse and say that everything is fine because it is a fallacy that no one would believe”.

“Now, to say that some things got worse is not true, for example, in terms of security. The gas station here around the corner, when I came here and the Frente Amplio was governing, it had been robbed I don't know how many times, and people had been hurt. We did not stand on that to say that things were worse and it was a catastrophe. The good thing is to deal with accurate figures. I am going to leave the pandemic aside, we could get caught. And we have a lot of things to improve”, said Lacalle Pou.

With these statements, the President responded to what was stated by the Frente Amplio this Saturday. After its National Plenary issued a statement, it affirmed that “the coalition government headed by Herrerismo [Lacalle Pou's political-ideological line] arrives in the middle of the period with an economic and security emergency”.

The opposition party has said that “the harsh situation our country is going through with the permanent increase in violence requires maturity and responsibility” and it offered an “exchange” to work on the issue.

”At the end of the FA [Broad Front] government, the economy was not growing, unemployment was increasing, 50 thousand jobs fell and informality was 25%. Now the economy is growing (4.4%), unemployment is down (7.5%), jobs are recovering and informality is down to 22%. The facts are undeniable”, minister of labor Pablo Mieres wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

Read also: Uruguay faces a wave of violence that could mean a homicide record – government blames drug trafficking