MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

A melancholic Lacalle Pou recalls his father's last day in office

“I was 20 years old” when Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera's government reached the same point, he pointed out

On his last day in office after five years, Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou expressed gratitude to those who supported his administration and recalled a similar day 30 years ago when his father's (Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera) term came to an end. President-elect Yamandú Orsi is to be sworn in Saturday in an indoor ceremony at the SODRE Auditorium as the ceremony was shifted to an indoor venue given the rain forecast.

Lacalle Pou particularly underlined the importance of officials involved in the Covid-19 pandemic efforts.

“With satisfaction, I think I fulfilled the commitment I made five years ago,” Lacalle Pou stressed. “There is nothing nicer than serving one's country,” he added while admitting he noticed that in “the faces of men and women who dedicated five years of their lives” to that end. He also mentioned he felt “respect, appreciation, and gratitude.”

Regarding his father's last day in office, Lacalle Pou recalled that “I was 20 years old and my feeling was one of melancholy, but I perceived in those men and women who were ending the Government that there was something else and I could not feel it,” he said.

And “30 years later it is my turn to participate in a similar ceremony, and as it happens many times in life, 30 years had to pass to be able to feel some things.”

“Today ends a coalition government that began long before a document was signed,” he also pointed out. “It began as all movements begin, from the popular clamor that we politicians have to understand and put into action.”

Lacalle Pou said his administration was “a government of action” because “it is a mortal sin for a government not to act and transform.” It was also based on “principles and beliefs” such as humanism and justice because “it is not possible to govern a country for a few,” the departing leader insisted. He also recalled that his team “never raised their voices or insulted” to defend their “firm” ideas.

Attending Saturday's handover ceremony at the Official Service for Broadcasting, Performances, and Shows (Servicio Oficial de Difusión, Representaciones y Espectáculos - SODRE) Auditorium in Montevideo will be several world leaders, including King Felipe VI of Spain, and Presidents Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Germany), Vahagn Khachaturyan (Armenia), Gabriel Boric Font (Chile), Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva (Brazil); Santiago Peña (Paraguay); Luis Arce Catacora (Bolivia), Gustavo Petro (Colombia), Xiomara Castro (Honduras), José Raúl Mulino (Panama), and Bernardo Arévalo de León (Guatemala). Argentina's Javier Milei has excused himself from attending the Broad Front (Frente Amplio - FA) leader's inauguration because he is due to open the 2025 Legislature in Buenos Aires.