Yamandú Orsi said yesterday that he has received a flood of messages of congratulations, each of which is news for a country with little space in the trends of continental communication and the large companies that manage information.

The country’s relative political and citizen peace contributes to this, even though, in the matter of security, there are more and more public acts of violence, which the authorities affirm go hand in hand with drug trafficking and crime.

Orsi will debut in the international arena as president-elect on March 6th at the Mercosur summit, to which he was invited by the outgoing president, Luis Lacalle Pou, who will hand over the pro tempore presidency of the bloc. Orsi will meet with leaders of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia and Panama.

During the meeting, Orsi said that he would promote the insertion of Uruguay in the world economy, but take care of the unity of Mercosur.

The comment marks a distance from Lacalle Pou’s position, who leaves the presidency without achieving free trade agreements with nations outside the bloc, particularly with China, despite criticism from his peers in the Southern Common Market. “I am deeply integrationist in a world that is shutting itself in,” Orsi told the press after visiting former president José Mujica on Monday.

The president-elect noted that one must have “a good relationship with the region because in a month everything can change,” in a world that “is sitting on a powder keg.”

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