Open Town Hall (CA) reached the minimum number of signatures necessary to call a plebiscite for “a fair debt and against usury“in the November runoff, announced this Tuesday its leader, Senator Guido Manini Ríoswho, however, asked to continue with the collection to have a “cushion” of support.
“We have until next May 24 to present the signatures,” recalled the also presidential candidate and assured that CA “continues working intensely” to gather more signatures because it considers it important to have an “extra” in case several of them are rejected by the Electoral Court.
He PIT-CNTfor example, presented 430,023 signatures for its plebiscite against the social security reform and, so far, the Court has rejected 20% of the signatures analyzed. The minimum requested is 270,000.
“We know that there are statistically discards, which is why we have to pass 300,000 signatures to be calmer. We are working intensely,” said Manini Ríos.
However, the plebiscite against usury in November is not guaranteed since there are experts who maintain that the Constitution only provides for popular consultations to be held in the first round since the ballot is not mandatory and only occurs if no candidate exceeds 50%. of the votes. However, second rounds are traditional in Uruguay.
Town meeting launched its plebiscite last year after it failed in the Parliament a bill to the same effect. The party’s argument, criticized by the National Partysectors of the Wide Front and the banking sectoris that there are “hundreds of thousands of Uruguayans who today are considered irrecoverable debtors” as a result of the interest charged by financial entities.
Basically, the initiative aims to modify article 52 of the Constitution to establish the “prohibition of usury” and set “the maximum interest for all concepts in a Annual Effective Rate of 30% on the amounts converted to Indexed Units (UI)“. In turn, it indicates penalties against the “contraveners” of the measures and adds that “no one may be deprived of their freedom for debts.”
In Uruguay there are more than 700,000 people classified as debtors with difficulty in their ability to pay, according to the Credit Risk Center (CRC) of the BCU which, as of May 2023, had 1,905,155 people in the country registered as debtors.
Source: Ambito
