Tensions and Contradictions: Compliance Is Valued More Than Competence
There are visible tensions and contradictions within the current administration, where the official discourse promoting merit-based recruitment through public examinations clashes with a reality shaped by unsuitable political appointments that have defined the management of positions of trust.
The Challenge of Coherence: Merit for the People, Privilege for the Elite
Uruguay is experiencing a form of cognitive dissonance that steadily erodes public trust.
While the governing coalition maintains its rhetorical crusade for qualified access to public service through competitive processes, the upper echelons of Orsi’s government operate under a far more flexible code of ethics and competence.
The slogan “a homeland for all” has become bifurcated: one standard of demand for ordinary citizens, and an informal shield of protection for the political elite.
From “Trust” to Scandal
Orsi has elaborated on the relationship he intended to maintain with his ministers, using expressions such as:
“I’m going to give ministers weight and let them play hard.”
“There comes a point where you can’t cover everything.”
When asked about autonomy, he clarified that he did not seek total independence, so as not to repeat past mistakes of insufficient oversight, but rather that each senior official should engage in politics and manage their area with authority.
When presenting his cabinet on December 18, 2024, he reinforced this idea by emphasizing that he had formed a team with “strong technical solvency and political leadership.”
Consistent with the populist approach of the Frente Amplio and Orsi’s own background, his formation has been rooted in teaching and in traditional folk arts such as malambo, alongside experience in the family business.
The argument of “positions of particular trust” has historically served to shield appointments that later proved catastrophic. The results of this first year have been no exception.
What, then, is the technical filter for those who hold the reins of the State?
When political loyalty replaces suitability, the outcome is not merely inefficiency but institutional vulnerability, something the country cannot afford.
This “freedom of appointment” stands in stark contrast to the rigor imposed on positions at the lowest levels of the public hierarchy.
For those at the top, party affiliation becomes the only diploma required.
Double Standards: Between Estates and Dictatorships
The contradiction is not merely administrative but deeply moral and economic.
Public opinion watches with astonishment as central figures of the government and the Frente Amplio, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs, maintain rhetorical protection of the Venezuelan dictatorship, a regime that stands as the antithesis of any genuine notion of a “homeland for all.”
This semantic gymnastics, which avoids calling an extreme authoritarianism by its name, coexists with domestic scandals that strike at the heart of the austerity narrative.
The purchase of the María Dolores estate has become the symbol of a new ruling class that, while preaching redistribution, consolidates personal wealth in ways that distance it from the reality of ordinary workers, and even more so from the unemployed.
It is the aesthetic of abundance within a political sector that historically made poverty its banner, lowering it whenever politically convenient.
The so-called business-tribute will cost taxpayers millions of dollars, still undefined, despite the fact that a year later it remains unclear why the estate was purchased at all, amid resignations and negative technical reports over what could have been resolved with a simple bust.
The Cardama Affair
Someone prompted the president to deliver a public address in which he hurled crude legal accusations against the contract to build two patrol boats.
Despite the fact that it was the lowest-priced option acceptable to public finances, that construction was progressing at a good pace, that two Navy officers were stationed at the shipyard and raised no concerns about noncompliance, and that the work was subject to internationally audited standards, the triumvirate indulged in theatrics over allegedly criminal acts.
They moved forward with unilateral contract rescission, violating national and international legal norms.
Off went the Secretary and the Prosecutor to the Prosecutor’s Office with complaints and expanded accusations, while the Minister of Defense sang the tango Uno, the president of the state bank staged a parody to avoid honoring the letter of credit mandated by banking law.
Taxes for Others, Exemptions for Me
Perhaps the most acute point of this asymmetry lies in fiscal policy.
The promotion of taxes and fiscal burdens that suffocate the productive sector and independent professionals stands in contrast to figures such as Arim, precisely the official responsible for budgetary revenue, ministers, union leaders, and political operatives who orbit within an ecosystem where the fiscal rules they impose simply do not apply to them.
It is the paradox of the legislator or senior official who designs sacrifice for others from the comfort of his own ideological self-exemption.
If the homeland is for no one unless it is for everyone, the current system is creating a caste of “VIP” citizens who do not need to compete for high-paying public jobs, who justify foreign authoritarian regimes while enjoying republican privileges, who acquire vast estates destined to impoverish undercapitalized settlers while housing access remains an ordeal for the rest, and who promote taxes from which they themselves are shielded by political engineering and institutional impunity.
Meritocracy, in this context, becomes a mirage: an iron rule for those without power and a conveniently forgotten suggestion for those who inhabit executive towers and ministerial or parliamentary offices.
Only those who govern poorly can claim “we’re doing well,” because it would not suit them to expose the approaching collective abyss.
For them, public spending can be infinite, since it is always paid by “the usual fools.”
They justify that impoverishment has nothing to do with fiscal pressure.
They claim debt is neutral, because if it cannot be paid, it simply won’t be.
They assert there is fiscal space to confiscate the governed’s money, because “everything belongs to the State.”
And the union leadership that militates this vision has its income guaranteed without physical effort.
They squander arbitrarily, convinced that the popular vote granted them impunity for such corruption.
They believe that “they,” ignorant of what to do and how to do it, know better how to use the resources produced by others.
It is an obsessive political idea, straight from authoritarian manuals repeated across countless congresses of the International, which demands placing militants in power as a means of transferring the capital of those who work and produce to political cadres.
They are ignorant, yet sovereign in their authoritarian arrogance.
The Fallacy of the Ignorant
They do not know because they neither study nor strive.
They do not reason, but believe their performative Marxist “sensitivity” suffices to run the economy and regiment society.
We will see further consequences of other “autonomous” ministers.