MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguay: pre-candidates for presidency announced

Delgado will resign his post but guide his successor as presidential secretary

Uruguay's Presidential Secretary Álvaro Delgado of the ruling Multicolor coalition and specifically from within the Aire Fresco movement of the Nationalist Party (White), announced Saturday that he would be resigning his job to focus on his bid to become the next head of state of a country where back-to-back reelection is not allowed.

Also launching her run for the Torre Ejecutiva late on Friday at the capital's Cordón Club was Montevideo Mayor Carolina Cosse of the opposition Frente Amplio who insisted that her political force was the only one “capable of giving answers to the people.”

“Today more than ever, our people need answers with facts, not with stories,” she went on in the presence of FA Chairman Fernando Pereira and other presidential contenders such as Yamandú Orsi, Mario Bergara, and Andrés Lima. The FA National Plenary convened Saturday in Maldonado to confirm the four bids

“It is a historic day because today the plenary has just proclaimed as pre-candidates for the presidency of the Republic the comrades Yamandú Orsi, Carolina Cosse, Mario Bergara, and Andrés Lima,” said Pereira, who added that his party was enjoying “a very important climate of unity.”

“One could say that today the new progressive government begins to be configured,” Pereira stressed.

Delgado explained that although the process was just beginning he rescued the same conviction and illusion of all his previouspolitical projects. “I am going to start at the end: yes, I am going to accept that challenge. I want to be the candidate of the National Party, of the government coalition and I want to be the next president of the Republic,” Delgado told a White gathering.

“Thank you all for the affection, for the trust, and for the faith,” he went on before pledging to guide his successor during the upcoming transition at the Presidential Secretary.

Delgado underlined that President Luis Lacalle Pou received “a broken country” from the Frente Amplio and had to get it back on track. “What they did not do was because they did not want to, not because they could not,” he stressed.

On the other side, Cosse argued that Lacalle Pou “was prepared to win and remove the FA but not to govern.” In Cosse's view, the incumbent president “has a specialty of pretexts” for his shortcomings: “When there is no answer for the people it is the fault of others,” she stressed while questioning the government's health, security, and housing policies. For Cosse, there is currently “a crisis of values.”