The President of the Republic, Luis Lacalle Pou, said on Monday that his administration will remain faithful to its security strategy, led by the Minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber, despite the fact that 11 homicides have been confirmed in the last five days.
“I was asked on August 25 about this; four days later the answer is exactly the same”, reaffirmed the president this Monday at a press conference.
“I don’t want it to serve as an excuse, but you know that there was a very important drop in other crimes,” the president added. That is why, he understands, that “they are not linked” to other crimes such as robbery or theft.
Lacalle insists that, from the perspective of the Executive Power, it is seeing “a violence closely linked to the drug trafficking business, violence between gangs, which we are trying to do the corresponding prevention.”
And he finished: “It is very difficult when it comes to this type of homicide.”
Since August 23, a string of murders has been recorded in Montevideo: 3 occurred over the weekend, in addition to the 8 that have occurred since the aforementioned day. The neighborhoods of Peñarol, Manga, Marconi and Piedras Blancas are some of the places where these violent events have taken place.
Concerned
The president assured that he is not trying “minimize” the statistics, because “they are lives of Uruguayans,” and that his administration does not intend to “catalogue deaths into class A and class B.”
“Any increase in violence worries us a lot,” he reflected.
Lacalle Pou was in La Paloma, Rocha, this Monday for the inauguration of the 2022 whale watching season.
