The President of the Republic, Luis Lacalle Pou, was present this Sunday at the 91st Annual Assembly of the Rincón del Cerro Agrarian Defense and Development Society, where he took advantage of the microphone to respond to some of the criticisms made by the National Plenary of the Broad Front what they understand is a complicated security situation.
He began by saying that “noor do you have to be obtuse, saying that everything is fine is a fallacy and no one would believe it. Now, to say that some things got worse is not truefor instance, on safety matter. The good thing is to deal with objective figures”.
“It is obvious that these two years were marked by a pandemic, but it does not seem to us that we have to be redundant on the subject to make excuses, what had to be done was done, the resources were available and the government continued marching and walking,” he added.
He also spoke at the event about his administration’s support for the agricultural sector and stated that there is “enormous economic uncertainty and some issues that put us above the economic, due to legal issues, and we are going to move forward.” In reference to what happens in the Metropolitan Agrifood Unit (UAM).
He also assured that he will move forward with the creation of the National Farm Institute, whose existence was decreed in the Law of Urgent Consideration (LUC) but that, two years after it came into force, the body has no form or substance.
Going back on security
In the resounding interview of the program of the BBC Hard Talkwith the journalist Stephen Sackur, Lacalle was faced with a series of questions about his promises and his achievements, among which the issue of security stands out.
Regarding the internal social reality, the communicator asked him about his policies to reduce the growing criminality in the country, which has led to unusual events and violent incidents that are unprecedented.
“I look at the growing number of homicides, gang crime, insecurity in Uruguay and (you) said ‘I’m going to fix it,'” the journalist asked. Lacalle replied that “you should also look at the percentage of other crimes. All other crimes, except homicides, fell”.
The statistics are conclusive: In just 11 days in May, the same figure was reached for the entire month of April 2021, when 16 cases had been raised. In the first week of May, 9 murders were reported and, in the first quarter of the current year, these types of events increased in relation to the same period last year.
The same figures from the Ministry of the Interior show that it is not true that all crimes fell “except” homicides, because until the beginning of May there had been 96 homicides, 6,463 robberies, 30,444 thefts, 272 cattle rustling (cattle theft) and 10,141 acts of domestic violence.
Domestic violence increased 11.20% and thefts grew by 3.20%. The robberies fell 6.30% and the theft of cattle 16.30%.
Later, he added that Uruguay is “receiving a lot of pressure from drug traffickers” that is why “violence has increased.”
