The senator for Cabildo Abierto, Guido Manini Ríos, came out to defend his wife, the Minister of Housing, Irene Moreira, for her campaign commitment to end the management of this government with the delivery of 50,000 homes, which the same minister at some point moment defined as only an “intention” of what “should” and not as a concrete fact that is going to be carried out.
Manini Ríos says that this promise was never made, and that something like this “could” have been said in an interview.
Indeed, those statements were made on April 19, 2020 in an interview with the newspaper The country. Months later, on the show good morning uruguaythe presenter Claudia García asked him how the 50,000 homes were going to be built, Moreira replied: “No, I put it as something to show what should be done, yes, I promise to make the greatest effort to get the largest number of homes , and for that we have worked from the first day we assumed the ministry, seeking to open the range both in all the programs that the ministry has and in alternative construction programs”.
About this, recently the undersecretary, Tabaré Hackenbruch, stated: “We do not want it to remain as a lie turned into truth”, and remarked that they “never” did, neither in the campaign before the national elections, nor during the ballot, they did that promise.
Quoted in the newspaper The Observer, Hackenbruch said that, once the electoral process was over, the ministry entered “to become aware” of the situation, and they assure that they found a deficit of almost 60,000 homes. The central proposal is rather to “close as much as possible” that housing gap, but without speaking of a number.
promises and vows
Manini Ríos was also quoted in the aforementioned medium, and added: “I do not remember that in the campaign our party, or another party of the government coalition, made a promise of 50,000 homes (…) We would never have had the crystal ball and to think that we were going to integrate the Ministry of Housing”. Of course, he admitted that the announcement could have been made in an interview, without specifying where or when.
“In campaign, sometimes there are promises based on which the vote is collected”continued Manini, “… another thing is to say, a few days after taking office and when all the fish was already sold, we were going to build so many houses,” he specified.
The ultra-conservative legislator hopes that the numbers of what “was not” a campaign promise but an “expression of will” towards which “they are on the road and hopefully can be achieved” will be ratified.
