MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Luis Lacalle Pou won’t attend UN General Assembly

In the last assembly, Lacalle Pou referred to how the pandemic changed countries all over the world

Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou will not attend the 77th General Assembly of the United Nations to be held in New York. Foreign Minister Francisco Bustillo will attend in his place, reported El Observador and confirmed MercoPress with sources from the Foreign Ministry.

Presidential sources confirmed that Lacalle has decided not to participate for “personal reasons” and that he has already sent a leave of absence request to the General Assembly for those days.

According to Montevideo Portal, the President will travel for five days with his three children on those dates, which coincide with the September or primaveral vacations in Uruguay. The world leaders’ meeting will take place from September 20 to 26.

For organizational reasons, Bustillo's speech will be in the last days, since the first places are reserved for the presidents who are present in UN’s headquarters.

In the last assembly, Lacalle Pou referred to how the pandemic changed countries all over the world, regardless of size, economic power or development, and laid bare the inequities and structural differences of each country, “as well as the democratic quality and the vocation for freedom of different governments and societies”.

“Our country, Uruguay, has an immense democratic vocation, and a very important valuation of individual freedom. Freedom as the purest state of the individual. What has been demonstrated in this pandemic, if it was necessary, is that the unequal access to the tools makes it possible to enjoy freedom in different ways”, added the president in a recorded message that was transmitted in the assembly.

On the other hand, he spoke about food systems and how Uruguay works in that sense. “Food systems play a fundamental role in Uruguay, as a food producing and exporting country,” he said.

In turn, he said that this condition generates “a profound economic, social and environmental impact” and said that Uruguay has “a national roadmap to accelerate transformations and achieve healthier food systems”.