Unlike other countries where the change of command from one government to the other takes shape a few weeks after the election, in Uruguay The transition period extends for at least three months.
During this stage, the winner of the elections usually announces his government team and the exchange of information between ministries begins. But in the middle appears summer and the licenses of officials, which causes work to enter a pause.
This is what is currently happening with the transition between the administration of Luis Lacalle Pou and that of the elected president, Yamandú Orsi. The president who will take office on March 1 acknowledged days ago that this process entered into an “impasse” during the first days of January. We will have to wait a few weeks, therefore, to find out who will occupy the leadership of the ministries and the boards of directors of public companies.
But in these weeks there was room for controversy. One of the differences between the center-right government of Lacalle For and the center-left of Yamandú Orsi is in one mega project to build a water intake from the Río de la Plata and make water drinkable. This is one of the main plans of the current administration, which was reinforced after the serious water crisis that the country went through in 2023, in which drinking water was scarce.
He project is called Neptune and was presented by the consortium Waters of Montevideo (composed of the companies Berkes, Saceem, Ciemsa and Fast), and proposes the installation of a water intake from the Río de la Plata at the Arazatí spa (in San José, 92 kilometers from the Uruguayan capital). The work includes the construction of a water treatment plant, a pumping station and an adduction pipeline.
In the programmatic bases of the Wide Front –the left coalition program on which Orsi should theoretically be based– this project is not a priority. And, on the other hand, he proposes: “Priority will be given to the realization of the Casupá Project and complementary projects aimed at ensuring the supply of drinking water.”
Alejandro Sanchezthe future Secretary of the Presidency (a role similar to that of the chief of staff in other countries), recognized days ago that this matter generates “tension.” “The Neptune Project had a set of observations and from our point of view they had to be collected”, he declared in a press conference.
“We are talking with the government, they are providing the information to analyze it and have an opinion. We are critics of the projectIf there are possibilities of raising the observations that are on the table, we want to study them, but we still do not have that information. We have received information, not all we want”Sanchez added.
The differences on this issue were not surprising. It was even expected because it was one of the issues that motivated criticism from the Wide Front to the management of Lacalle For. But the other visions regarding another great work did surprise.
It is about the green hydrogen project that the multinational Hif plans to build in Paysandu (on the Uruguayan coast, bordering Argentina). If completed, it would be the largest investment in the history of Uruguay (USD 6,000 million). The different vision in this case was around the state participation.
The original agreements with the multinational gave the option for the State to participate in up to 30% of the investment. That is, it is a kind of shareholder in the green hydrogen project. The current Executive Branch decided to desist from this possibility with the argument that the risk should be taken by the private sector.
But The future leaders of the Frente Amplio want that option to continue being. They do not express themselves on the underlying issue (that is, whether the State should participate or not), but they do assure that it cannot be deprived of the possibility.
Sánchez He explained: “That there is a possibility in the future that if the State decides to participate in that project it can do so is important, and we disagree with the decision made by the government to remove that element from the negotiation with the company.”
