This Wednesday, March 9, a new debate was held on the Law of Urgent Consideration (LUC) on this occasion, between the senator of the Broad Front Alejandro Sánchez and the mayor of Rocha, the nationalist, Alejo Umpiérrez, and was broadcast on Channel 5.
Regarding security, Umpiérrez stressed that with the LUC, “the reduction of the sentence is not allowed for very serious crimes”, and defended that the Police can ask for the identity card in the street or check the trunk of a car, in the framework of a procedure, in order to detect a possible crime.
While Sánchez said that the LUC “does not support the police, does not fight crime and does not provide guarantees to the citizen.”
“If the LUC had magical effects, they would not have increased homicides and robberies. They only went down because of the pandemic,” said the FA legislator, and asked “to pay good salaries and good equipment for the police.”
Then, Umpierrez pointed out that the argument of the pandemic is not consistent with reality because crimes grew in the world while they fell in Uruguay, he said that the FA is anti-police. “What is the alternative that they propose: a timorous police officer whose car is turned over in a neighborhood?”
Faced with such statements, Sánchez said that being anti-police means lowering the salaries of the police.
On the other hand, he questioned that “it is wrong that the police can detain and take a worker to the police station for two hours for forgetting his identity card. Let them take the criminals, not the people who work.”
For Umpiérrez there is an “old complex of the left and of the union movement that is to have the “sense of being persecuted”, because asking for the ID is not a problem.
However, the Frente Amplio legislator remarked that the Police “could always ask for an identity card”, accused the government of “using the police for political purposes”, and rejected allowing retired police officers to carry weapons and intervene as a kind of sheriff, because windows are opened for police abuse.”
Given this, the mayor of Rocha remarked that the Police are used for “the fulfillment of their functions.”
“Before, a police officer went to court on an equal footing with a criminal and today he is defended, without prejudice to the fact that the contrary can be proven,” he added; and he highlighted that recently a retired police officer prevented a shoplifting.
fuels
As for fuel, Sánchez highlighted the breach of the electoral campaign commitment that if they won they would not increase fuel, but “there was one of the largest increases and in a context where wages and pensions are falling and all prices are rising.” .
“I voted for this article, but I feel betrayed because the first thing that was wanted was the demonopolization of fuel production, and it was avoided, and now we have a system where nobody knows how much they are going to be worth. This price distortion generated a very big problem,” Sánchez said.
While Umpiérrez remarked that these articles were co-written with the participation of Carolina Cosse, Mario Bergara and Sánchez, who “should go to the couch to explain why they are now challenging them.”
He said that before, while the price of oil was falling, the fuel was maintained and in this way 1,800 million dollars were taken from the people to be passed on to the State. “Today we have transparent increases.”
Sánchez insisted that the entire population was deceived, because they promised to lower fuel prices, but they raised it and, therefore, “they have to take responsibility.”
The departmental head of Rocha compared that in the world there are countries that have free prices, and added that the incidence of fuel in the family basket is negligible, 2.5%. The increases correspond to other realities: “the greater dynamism of the economy, the boom in commodities and the war.”
Umpiérrez denounced an “attempt to tackle the government, because opponents are carrying out a campaign of cuckoos, they speak of ‘easy trigger’, ‘express eviction’ or ‘privatization of the school'”.
However, Sánchez assured that the referendum “is not against the government”, because the FA voted in favor of more than half of the articles of the LUC, and asked for a State that protects people.
Regarding the end of the debate, Sánchez indicated that they intend to repeal the most negative aspects of the LUC and that they generate difficulties for the population. While Umpiérrez remarked that in two years of application of the LUC no apocalypse occurred. “We do not want the ‘peronization’ of Uruguayan politics that refers to: we govern or we will not let you govern.”
