Jorge Larrañaga, in March 2020.MARIANA GREIF / Reuters
Uruguay's Interior Minister and former presidential candidate, Jorge Larrañaga, died this Saturday from a cardiorespiratory arrest, sources close to the politician have confirmed to the local newspaper
El País
.
Larrañaga, 64, was one of the long-winded men within the National Party, the conservative acronym that in March 2020 broke with 15 years of left-wing hegemony.
“He was loving even in the harshness of the battle.
We compete, we cooperate, we respect each other.
He was at his best, ”said the president, Luis Lacalle Pou, with whom he shared two decades of experience, said goodbye.
Jorge Larrañaga passed away.
Very hard!
I learned to love and respect him.
He was loving even in the harshness of the battle.
We compete, we cooperate, we respect each other.
He was in his prime.
RIP.
pic.twitter.com/4rlRI8FCu4
- Luis Lacalle Pou (@LuisLacallePou) May 22, 2021
Larrañaga was a presidential candidate for the National Party in 2004. That year he lost to Tabaré Vázquez, the only president in the history of Uruguay who won an election in the first round and managed to break the bipartisanship between whites and colorados, in force since the decade of the 30 of the last century. In the 2009 presidential elections, the first to be won by the leftist José 'Pepe' Mujica, Larrañaga accompanied Lacalle Pou as a candidate for vice president, a formula that both repeated in 2014. With the triumph of his party in 2019 Larrañaga was appointed Minister of the Interior of the South American nation. During his short period, he proposed to reinforce the role of the national police, fight against drug trafficking and order the Uruguayan prisons.
The minister was originally from Paysandú, a municipality in the east of the country that Larrañaga ruled between 1990 and 1999. In 2000 the politician jumped into the national arena as the leader and founder of a division of the Nacional that demanded "renewal" in the leadership of the Uruguayan right.
Since then and until he assumed the Interior portfolio in March of last year, he never left his seat in the Senate.
Larrañaga, a horse fanatic, has been fired as the historic leader of his lineup and recognized as a worthy political contender by his opponents.
Álvaro Vázquez, son of former President Tabaré Vázquez, who died in December 2020, remembered him this Saturday as “a respectable and loyal man”.
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