It took place this Thursday and Friday at the hotel convention center enjoy of Tip from the east The conference Latin American Liberty Forumorganized globally by the foundation Atlas, and in Uruguay by the liberal think tank Development Studies Center (CED).
your manager Augustin Iturralde said to scope.com that the present of the country and its international image in areas as sensitive as the management of the Covid-19 pandemic positioned it for the realization of this event that brought together leading figures of liberal thought on the continent.
— Why make a forum of these characteristics where liberalism is the one that dominates the theme and what is the objective?
— This is a forum that has been held for many years in different places, where a number of study centers, intellectuals and people linked to the liberal world meet. Last year it was in Mexico and previously in Dominican and in Chili, but this is the first time it has been done in Uruguay. The idea is to unite people with a similar vision to discuss the great themes of the region: poverty, employment and economic prosperity.
From that things arise, such as the Bureaucracy Index, where the idea is to quantify the weight of the bureaucracy on small and medium-sized companies in the region and how much they weigh in each country.
— How present are liberal ideas today in governments and in the discussion of the political agenda in the region?
“Not a particularly good time, I think the liberal democracy in a broad sense, not in a restrictive sense, including the market economy, human rights, etc., is being threatened in the region. I think there is populism of all kinds of right and left, where there are threats of subjugation in some countries.
In that sense, I think that is also why we are in Uruguay. Most of the people who are here, from many countries of Latin America and USA They see an example in Uruguay, because of how the government and the opposition coexist, because of respect for public liberties, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, etc.
Uruguay is a reference in a region where what happened in Brazil, what happens in Venezuela, in Nicaragua, different countries where there is a real threat to freedoms.
— Does the imprint of this coalition government management reinforce that idea? Is it a liberal government?
– That is a good question. I think, in a way, yes. Here was the vice president of the Republic, Beatriz Argimón, that explained a “country” identity of an important value of freedom and I think there are some milestones. The one that attracts the most attention to foreigners is how was the pandemic handled, while in the world there was a mandatory quarantine, Uruguay was an exception. In other countries there were people who were stopped by the police for walking on the street.
I think it is an important milestone for this government that is based a lot on individual freedoms and rights.
— Are you still burdened with a heavy inheritance from a country with a “fat” state?
— Yes, but you have to question the quality more than the size. But if you look at the weight of the tax burden and in proportion to wealth, we have a state that has challenges. That’s what the minister said Danilo Astori in the last government of Broad Front: Uruguay can’t stand any new tax increase.
Now, with this small but symbolically important tax cut, I think that’s a good sign.
the CED
— What is the Center for Development Studies and what tasks does it perform?
— It is a Center for the Study of public policy analysis and proposalswe work with a vision that a much more developed Uruguay is possible, for a freer, fairer and more prosperous country.
We do this through rigorous research and input, clearly from a liberal vision in a very broad and not very dogmatic sense of the word.
We are now closing an investigation on the labor market, with a report on youth employment and the recovery of the post-pandemic labor market and mismatches between supply and demand. This is one of the issues that worries us the most.
Source: Ambito
