MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lacalle Pou praises departing Presidential Secretary Delgado

Delgado will focus on his own presidential campaign

Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou said Thursday that Álvaro Delgado was a “great management partner” as he left the presidential secretariat to focus on his 2024 bid for the Torre Ejecutiva. He will be replaced by Rodrigo Ferrés

“We have worked together for many years. He has always been a great partner in management. Especially in the most difficult ones. With enormous calmness, an extraordinary ability to negotiate, and almost unlimited work. Thank you Álvaro Delgado and success in this new challenge,” Lacalle wrote on X.

A key member of the current administration, Delgado acted as presidential spokesman on many occasions, such as when he announced the first death of Covid-19.

Delgado leads the polls within the National Party and is backed by Aire Fresco, the faction that put Lacalle Pou in office. He also has the support of D Centro and the Sumate group.

“Today is a very special day. I leave the Secretariat of the Presidency with the peace of mind of having given everything for the country and the certainty that with the government of @LuisLacallePou we have put Uruguay on its feet and begun to walk towards development,” the departing official posted on social networks.

He also said that if he is elected president, he will follow the steps of Lacalle Pou: he will not raise taxes and will create a “coalition coordination table.”

“I think that the coming government, if we are to win, we have to use this path that Luis Lacalle Pou started with the coalition government,” Delgado told Telemundo. “The continuity of this government in its essence, in what has to do with the important directions we are going to maintain,” he added.

“We may change some forms of internal management in the government. We are advocates of sectoral cabinets. We are going to create a coalition coordination table,” he added, highlighting the role of the Multicolor Coalition, of which the National Party is a member. “Most of the achievements of this government were made because the coalition voted for it,” Delgado explained.

“This government has lowered taxes and there is no discussion about it,” he also pointed out.

Regarding the Marset case, a scandal in which Uruguayan authorities granted a passport to notorious drug lord Sebastián Marset, Delgado said he believed it was “not a crisis” but “an issue of political sensitivity.”

Delgado also admitted that former presidential advisor Roberto Lafluf, who resigned from his post amid the Marset case, “will probably be part of a team of seven people who will work on the image and communication part” of his campaign, “which is what he has dedicated his whole life to and what he knows.”

Lafluf, who was in charge of the campaign that brought Lacalle to the Presidency, was mentioned in a controversy when he allegedly told then-Deputy Foreign Minister Carolina Ache to erase contents from her cellphone that would incriminate other officials. The case led to several resignations from Lacalle's cabinet.