The senator, leader of Town meeting and pre-candidate for the presidency of Uruguay for that match, Guido Manini Ríosmaintained that, compared to “undemocratic institutions” As the PIT-CNT, “the Armed forces “They are a brake.” Although the statements were made within the framework of a party meeting, they quickly generated controversy and several legislators, as well as the president of the union, Marcelo Abdala, They expressed their rejection of such sayings.
The discussion about the military participation in the security of the country is not recent, and a few months ago it was established in the public and political debate, hand in hand with the proposal of the senator and pre-candidate for the National Party, Jorge Gandini —with all the consequent controversy.
At the party meeting Town meeting, However, the issue was put on the table based on the proposal of one of the attendees at the event, according to the weekly Busqueda.
As he expressed without hesitation, for Manini Ríos proposals like Gandini’s are “demagogy pure”: “A soldier patrolling the streets with a highly lethal rifle, a rifle that if fired can cause very serious collateral damage… is not the solution,” said the former head of the Army.
Furthermore, he considered that taking the Armed Forces to the streets would lead to the discredit of the institution and “burning that cartridge, that last letter.”
However, Manini Ríos’ controversial statements came next, when he explained what, for him, is the true role that the forces have to play today. “In this country there are undemocratic institutions that have a very high impact on national politics, that have only one brake to avoid crossing a certain line, (and) that brake is the Armed Forces,” he began.
“An institution, and I put it, like the PIT-CNT, Who is going to stop them from doing what they want in the country and from entering the Goverment house and they want to impose this and that? Why do not they do it? Because there is always the possibility of activating the Armed Forces,” exemplified the lobbyist leader, in a way that would soon be questioned.
“The day that cartridge is discredited and burned, the Armed Forces will no longer be there and there will be a very democratically elected government but without the possibility of enforcing compliance with the Constitution of the Republic“, he concluded, pointing out the importance of “preserving that tool for any democratic government that can be respected.”
The repercussions against Manini Ríos
Although the senator of Town meeting He also gave other examples of “democratic institutions” such as “environmentalists, those of “Gualeguaychú” and the “Landless Brazil“, the national example was the one that was most impregnated with the criticism that Manini Ríos soon received for his comments, which were taken as a direct attack on the PIT-CNT and a reminiscence of effectively undemocratic times in the country.
One of those who referred to the issue was also a senator and pre-candidate, but for the Frente Amplio, Mario Bergara: “I read and reread the Military Organic Law and I can’t find anywhere that the repression of union movement is one of the functions of the Armed Forces. Maybe nostalgia is not a good travel companion,” he wrote on his social networks.
Also the deputy of National Party, Sebastián Andújar, He spoke out against Manini Ríos’ accusations about “undemocratic institutions.”
Although he maintained that “they are ideologies, ways of thinking, and that does not mean that they can divert us from the points that we have to attend to,” in relation to the formation of the coalition together with Town meeting; He did point out that he has “no indications nor suspicions that Uruguayan society has people who engage in undemocratic behavior or generate antidemocratic actions.”
In dialogue with Channel 12, the legislator stated that “there is an awareness of defending the democratic value, beyond the ideology that each one may have”, and that “the Uruguayan is not going to allow the democratic value to decline in our country.”
For his part, the president of PIT-CNT, Marcelo Abdala, He responded to Manini Ríos alluding to different dictators in Uruguayan history.
“The heirs of the Tower, the Terra and of the aberrant Goyo Alvarez, They talk to us about democracy. “No one is going to give democracy lessons to the union movement, which defended it with its life,” she wrote, also on social networks.
Source: Ambito
