MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lacalle to speak before the UN about Venezuela's electoral fraud

If Venezuela's electoral fraud loses centrality, Maduro gets to stay in power, Lacalle argued

Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou plans to address the issue of the Venezuelan crisis during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), it was reported this weekend in Montevideo. The National Party leader is convinced that “there is no will [in Caracas] to count the votes.”

“What has to be done is to count the votes. There is no will to count the votes. I believe there never was. Unfortunately, what is happening? The days are passing, people are taking to the streets in Venezuela, but, naturally, they have to go on with their lives,” Lacalle said.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's is “a very repressive regime” and that if it loses centrality as an issue “it spreads and remains,” Lacalle also argued. “I think this is an opportunity where there are 150, 160 heads of state that can exert significant pressure on what has clearly been an electoral fraud,” he insisted.

Lacalle concurred with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado that repeating the elections in Venezuela should be out of the question. “Until when?” Lacalle wondered. “Until the one who wants to win wins?”

The Uruguayan head of state also spoke in favor of the newly passed legislation allowing authorities to hospitalize street dwellers even against their will. “The law must be complied with,” he argued. He also admitted he had favored the measure for “many years.”

“This issue is a request, a plea many times, of mothers and families” of people who are “in a street situation due to their addiction or mental health,” Lacalle also explained. Many of these people even “commit crimes,” he added. “There are many people who are in prison because they were preceded by addiction and family destruction. So it is a necessity, which now becomes law,” he also noted. He also said he had instructed his aide Mariana Cabrera to keep weekly records on how the new law is applied.

On Aug. 25, the President participated in the traditional Independence Day ceremony at Piedra Alta in the Department (province) of Florida, where Interior Minister Nicolás Martinelli was the main speaker. The 199th anniversary of Uruguay's Declaration of Independence also included a military parade.

It was there in Piedra Alta that in 1825, Uruguayans “rose to forge their own path of freedom and sovereignty,” Martinelli argued. Almost two centuries later, that path “still demands the same passion and the same commitment,” he also pointed out.