Urgent Consideration Law Law No. 19889 of urgent consideration, also called "Law of Urgent Consideration" or abbreviated as "LUC", is a law whose bill was announced by President Lacalle Pou during the campaign, which aims to lay the foundations of his administration. This law was the subject of intense political debate between the ruling party and the opposition: • Modify legitimate defense in the Penal Code, increasing its concept and establishing new hypotheses in which legitimate defense is presumed. • Increase penalties for crimes related to drug trafficking and sexual violence in all its forms. In October 2020 several social and political organizations announced that they were going to promote a referendum to repeal 135 articles of the Law of Urgent Consideration. After the campaign to collect support signatures to invoke the referendum ended, on 8 July 2021 the president of the
national trade union confederation PIT-CNT announced that 763,443 signatures were collected and would be delivered that day after the Electoral Court to be validated. On 8 December 2021 the Electoral Court completed the validation procedure of the signatures and because the minimum signatures threshold to summon a referendum was reached, it called for a referendum to be held on 27 March 2022. After the referendum was held, the "NO" option won with 50.02% and therefore the 135 articles intended to be repealed were kept.
Public administration policies Since July 2020 two regulatory public bodies, the Regulatory Unit of Energy and Water Services (URSEA) and the Regulatory Unit of Communication Services (URSEC) that were created during the
presidency of Jorge Batlle, are not subordinated offices under the Executive anymore and from then they are
decentralized services. Thus they gained their own legal autonomy and
personhood. This was made in order to not have then subject to political issues and to make them structurally, functionally and budgetary independent. The new regulatory system as decentralized services also implies that they are now led by a board of directors according to the Constitution. Since the inauguration of this presidency on 1 March 2020, the number of attachés to each ministry were reduced from 86 to 42 in August 2020. The reduction of attachés was part of the electoral program promises of the National Party. The attachés are persons who can be directly hired by the ministries as confidence personnel without being limited by number, but they are not able to become public servants. This kind of relationship was created by a budgetary law during the first year of the
presidency of José Mujica and they are usually university graduates. However, their number increased to 47 by 31 December 2020 and to 56 by July 2022.
Culture Starting from 13 March 2020 the "MEC Centers" (
Centros MEC) cultural centers closed their doors. The minister of Education and Culture Pablo da Silveira intended to close them since 2018 before he was not even minister. The MEC Centers were a network of 127 centers created during the first presidency of Tabaré Vázquez and developed in the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) in coordination with the departmental governments, in order to decentralize the public policies on culture by opening cultural centers in several cities of the interior of Uruguay, each one managed authonomously with locals' needs in mind. In July 2021 minister Da Silveira said that the MEC Centers were suppressed because they were "problemantic" and they would be replaced by "a strategy that is more global, more ambitious that changes the perspective", and that the current administration did not want "to work for the [Uruguayan] interior, but together with them". The new system of decentralized cultural centers began to be deployed at the beginnings of 2022 due to the delay of COVID-19 pandemic, and the first National Cultural Center (CCN) designated was the Municipal Cultural Complex of Dolores.
Defense On March 16, 2020, more than 1,000 soldiers of the
Armed Forces were deployed to carry out the "Operation Safe Border", which consisted of patrolling the country's the 35,000 square kilometers of border defined to control, with the aim of combating insecurity, smuggling and drug trafficking. The
Air Force put its fleet of
Cessna A-37 Dragonfly into operation to conduct "reconnaissance, patrol, and surveillance" of the Northeast, while the
Navy deployed its personnel and equipment in border lakes and rivers. On September 8, the purchase of two
Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft from the Spanish Government was announced, for a price of 21 million euros and 1 million euros in spare parts. The opposition criticized this purchase, describing it as an "inopportune expense". The aircraft arrived in Uruguay on December 19, Defense Minister Javier García stated that "a process of modernization of essential equipment begins. With this incorporation there is more sovereignty, more human security and more civil protection." On December 22, 2020, the National Defense Council (CODENA) met for the first time. Chaired by President Lacalle Pou, it is an advisory and consultative body that works on the drafting of a decree with the defense guidelines for the entire term. The functions of the council are: to analyze threats that could harm the sovereignty and independence of the country, as well as seriously affect national interests; propose, in such cases, the measures or actions deemed necessary for its resolution; analyze and propose conflict hypotheses; suggest the adoption of strategies, approve the plans and coordinate the actions necessary for the defense, and make proposals on matters related to the defense that, because they affect various State agencies, require joint action. On 14 March, Lacalle requested the cancellation of public performances, and the closure of some public places. An awareness campaign was launched and citizens were advised to stay home. A two-week suspension of classes at public and private schools was also announced. On 16 March, Lacalle issued an order to close all border crossings except
Carrasco International Airport. The border with Argentina was closed effective 17 March at midnight. On that day, the
Ministry of Economy and Finance published a list of prices of products such as
alcohol gel,
rectified alcohol, and
surgical masks, in order to prevent
price gouging. Given the advance of the coronavirus around the world, many governments ordered the closure of borders and the cessation of airport operations and cancellations of commercial flights. Due to the Uruguayans being stranded abroad, the then Foreign Minister Ernesto Talvi ordered the operation "All at home" for the return of Uruguayans who were outside the national territory, who do not reside abroad and who planned to return to the country but could not by these restrictions. In the course of this operation, at least 3,965 Uruguayans stranded in 67 countries returned. In addition, the repatriation of foreigners stranded in Uruguay to their countries of origin was carried out. On 8 April, he announced the reopening of rural schools on 22 April. It was also reported that the reopening would be in educational centers in the interior of the country, excluding those of
Montevideo and
Canelones; and that attendance would be voluntary. It was 35% of the total registered. On April, 17 he informed that his administration decided to create a group, made up of experts that would define methods and studies to advise the government. The experts would be: the mathematician, electrical engineer, and academic from the Latin American Academy of Sciences,
Fernando Paganini; Dr.
Rafael Radi, the first Uruguayan scientist at the
U.S. National Academy of Sciences and president of the National Academy of Sciences of Uruguay; and Dr.
Henry Cohen Engelman, President of the National Academy of Medicine and awarded as a Master by the
World Gastroenterology Organisation in 2019. On 29 May, Lacalle himself, along with the Secretary of the Presidency, the
Minister of National Defense, his private secretary and the
ASSE President began a quarantine while awaiting the test, after having contact with the director of the
Ministry of Social Development in
Rivera, who was infected with COVID-19. A day later, after being tested, it was confirmed that neither he nor the other government officials had contracted the virus. As of December 2, given the increase in cases (especially in Montevideo), a series of temporary measures were put into effect to slow growth. Among them the closure of sports activities in gyms and closed places,
remote work requirements, closing of restaurants after midnight and the suspension of end-of-year parties. On December 16, due to the exponential growth of cases, the Executive Power announced a new set of measures: the regulation of Article 38 of the
Constitution (the power of the executive power to dissolve agglomerations); the prohibition of entry from abroad between December 21 and January 10; the reduction of the capacity in interdepartmental transportation by half on those dates; the extension of the opening hours of shopping malls and street markets; the reopening of gyms (with a maximum capacity of 30%) and the suspension of public shows.
General guidelines for the development of telehealth On 2 April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the
Telehealth Law No. 19869 was approved. It established general guidelines to deploy and develop telehealth as a way to improve the efficiency and quality of medical services, as well as to expand their coverage by using
information and communications technologies. The geographic distance between the patient and the
health professional is a factor that encourages the usage of these technologies in order to exchange information to perform
medical diagnosis, to indicate
medical treatments and to prevent diseases, in addition to being useful to health professionals for further
training. According to that Law, the development of telehealth must be performed under the following principles: universality, guaranteed access of the entire population to health, equity by allowing the medical attention in remote locations or those without resources, quality of services both towards the patient and the personnel training, efficiency by optimizing the use of resources, decentralization of the National Integrated Health System, complementarity but without replacing direct treatment of the patient, and confidentiality of the medical-patient relationship as well as protecting the privacy during the remote exchange of medical information. One article of the Telehealth Law was nonetheless criticized by Eduardo Cavalli, Minister of a Court of Appeals, who warned that the provision under article 7 regarding the patient's consent, it said that in the case of treatment of minors of age, the consent was to be given by their legal representative, however this was contradictory and against the rights of minors because, according to a pillar of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, they should be treated not according to their age but they have the right to express their views in all matters that affect minor's life in accordance with the maturity of the minor. To address this legal problem, the Broad Front representative Cristina Lustemberg promoted a reform bill to modify article 7 so that in medical procedures through telehealth the principle of progressive autonomy of minors' and disabled persons' will is observed, in order to fix the regression of rights. This ended up being approved in August 2021. == Foreign policy ==