President Luis Lacalle Pou confirmed that he will campaign in favor of the social security reform, after the Electoral Court has approved the necessary signatures so that the plebiscite against him can be voted on in the general elections in October, an issue that seems to divide the Broad Front (FA) but unify the National Party (PN).
Last Wednesday the Electoral Court finally validated the 276,151 required votes, that is, 10% of the electoral roll needed to push for the plebiscite. Based on this, the president made a decision.
The president will campaign to prevent the approval of the plebiscite against the social security reform. According to the president, there are two essential things that he will defend, reported El País.
On the one hand, the fact that the system is put into play by not being able to guarantee a medium-term financing and, on the other hand, that there was indeed dialogue between the parties involved before launching the project and approving it.
An initiative that divides the Broad Front
Generally speaking, the Broad Front took two positions in the plebiscite promoted by the PIT-CNT: On the one hand, “freedom of action” and, on the other, the agreement that the eventual government would call for a national dialogue to develop a new reform of social security.
But the internal resultsin which the sectors that supported the initiative of the trade union centre were the clear losers, could force a more immediate change of scenario. Something that was even put on the table by Orsi before the press after the first official campaign meeting, when he pointed out that the left-wing coalition was analysing the issue and did not rule out future statements on the matter.
The reality is that, of the 20 lists that received the most votes in the Frente Amplio primaries, 12 are decidedly against the constitutional reform proposed by the PIT-CNT, and another four avoided taking a position on the matter. Those that did support it, the remaining four, were the big losers of the night.
These data, together with Orsi’s victory with 57% of the votes – having expressed himself against the plebiscite on several occasions – put pressure on the executive Secretary to make a decision that takes into account the popular will and the distribution of internal forces, which would also bring internal difficulties. Likewise, for Mario Bergara, the fact that the FA formula does not have a consolidated position on the matter “could be a factor of weakness.”
A consolidated ruling party to defend the reform
In this sense, his failure to decide on the plebiscite was one of the most used arguments against Cosse during the campaign for June. And the fact that the Front repeats the strategy for October could play against it in the face of the coalition candidates. —Alvaro Delgado, Andres Ojeda and Guido Manini Rios— who quickly lined up behind the proposal Pablo Mieres to make a joint statement against the PIT-CNT initiative.
Orsi, who was also summoned, has not yet returned a response. Meanwhile, Delgado signed the declaration against the plebiscite in the legislative Palace and then participated in the presentation of the book “Constitutional Plebiscite on Social Security. Critical Analysis”, by Rodolfo Saldain and Gonzalo Martinez Alba; clearly marking the playing field on an issue that promises to be the nationalist’s campaign artillery.
The government’s stance and the economic effects
Last week, at the Legislative Palace, the coalition candidates signed a commitment against the Constitutional reform proposed by the PIT-CNT promoted by the candidate of the Independent Party and former minister of Labor and Social Security (MTSS) Pablo Mieres.
The first point of the text signed by the candidates of the governing coalition states that it is “absolutely inconvenient that the retirement age and the minimum years of service required to access the common retirement cause be fixed in the Constitution of the Republic“.
“Such parameters will necessarily have to be modified over time due to demographic factors, technological innovations, transformations in the labour market and changes in customs,” it says.
In fact, the rigidity of the system that its introduction into the Constitution would mean is one of the main criticisms, especially after the data of the 2023 Census which gave an account of the population aging that is already being experienced Uruguay.
This was expressly stated in point number two of the text, which also added that “the proportion of older adults in the population will continue to increase, which will force active workers to make recent contributions to social security”; therefore “the elimination and prohibition of individual savings systems” is “especially inadvisable”.
Likewise, for the coalition candidates, “it is particularly wrong to equate the minimum retirement with the Minimum salary National (SMN) “because, as has happened in the past, governments will seek to keep the level of MN low in order to contain the increase in public spending, generating a distortion in the labour market and becoming an irrelevant parameter for setting wages.”
In point four, they also stressed that the initiative “will require substantial increases in the transfers to the retirement and pension system for its financing with the consequent increase in taxes.” In particular, taxes and contributionswhich will have to be paid by the Uruguayan population as a whole.
“This situation consolidates the existing inequality because the poverty In our country, it is concentrated in children and adolescents and because youth unemployment is three times higher than the average of the population,” the text stated, referring to the high levels of child poverty in the country.
Finally, he stresses that the proposal also raises the “confiscation of savings of hundreds of thousands of citizens, which would seriously affect the international credibility “achieved” by Uruguay during decades.
Source: Ambito
