The Learning Machine will hold its fourth Forum, this time on “Decentralization: Challenges of departmental and local governments” together with a top-level academic panel and a political panel made up of seven departmental mayors. The event will be on Wednesday, May 25 at 5:00 p.m. in the Conference Center of the Florida Mall and broadcast virtually through the platform evoluciondemocratica.uy.
The Learning Machine is a project to strengthen democracy in Uruguay and the region, which seeks to establish political-academic areas for discussion, diagnosis and proposals to continue improving the practices and institutions of Uruguayan democracy.
This initiative, supported by the Regional Program for Political Parties and Democracy in Latin America of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, began in 2021 with the presentation of the project, a first forum on Parliamentary Consultancies, another focused on politics and social networks, and, during this year, there will be a dialogue on political representation and gender, decentralization, departmental and local governments and the mechanism for urgent consideration.
“Decentralization: Challenges of departmental and local governments” is a forum that aims to exchange and visualize the functioning of democracy at the subnational level, that is, at the departmental and municipal levels. A discussion is proposed with technical inputs that involve academics, politicians and citizens, on local politics where it is intended to visualize various realities regarding democracy in departmental systems such as the alternation and permanence of political parties in the government at the local level. subnational, the autonomy of the legislative positions in the territory and the power that the legislative positions have in each department.
Two experts on the subject, Antonio Cardarello and Ernesto Nieto from the University of the Republic, will present an exhaustive investigation on the matter, which will be commented on by María de Lima, director of decentralization of the Planning and Budget Office, and Martin Freigedo of the Udelar.
Subsequently, there will be a qualified and diverse political panel in which the mayors Wilson Ezquerra (Tacuarembó), Andrés Lima (Salto), Guillermo López (Florida), Ana Olivera (former Mayor of Montevideo), Richard Sander (Rivera), Carmelo Vidalín (Peach) and José Yurramendi (Cerro Largo). The instance will be moderated by the journalist Patricia Madrid and the political scientist Fernanda Boidi.
This space from the city of Florida will have the support of the Congress of Mayors, the Departmental Government of Florida and the Interior Press Organization. It will mark a milestone in the discussion on departmental and local governments, in the perspective of continuing to improve the quality of Uruguayan democracy.
