Paraguay, in crisis
A La Jornada editorial
With an extraordinary session of the Organization of America States (OAS) dedicated to Paraguay as the background, that South American country is the topic of discussion as a result of its all out political crisis following the institutional coup d’état that claimed victim the democratically elected government of Fernando Lugo.
On the domestic front, the Supreme Court and the Superior Court of Electoral Justice have validated both the impeachment summary judgment to which Lugo was submitted by the Congress – dominated by the oppositionist oligarchy – as well as the constitutionality of Federico Franco’s presidency, a post he’s held since last Monday. Beforehand Franco had held the job of vice president. These actions have closed virtually all legal avenues to restore democratic institutions unless the legislature itself reverses its steps and returns Lugo to power.
Meanwhile, with heated demonstrations on the streets, thousand of the deposed president’s partisans have formed a National Front for the Defense of Democracy that maintains control of the public television and in which is found a convergence of student and farmer organizations as well as regular citizens. The tension has reached a point that Franco yesterday (Tuesday) declared that his priority is to “avoid a civil war” and gave up further attempts to violently take the public television facilities.
Regional isolation of the coup regime is general: two of the three countries bordering Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, have called for consultations with their respective ambassadors in Asuncion. As for the other border state, Bolivian President Evo Morales announced that they would not recognize Franco because he heads a government “gestated by neoliberals in collaboration with local landowners and the empire,” in reference to the United States.
Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela have expressed, in different ways and intensities, their rejection of the legal trickery by which the legislature ousted the president elected in 2008. Several nations of the region have shown interest in excluding the regime headed by Franco from the OAS. And Mercosur vetoed the summit meeting scheduled for Friday in Mendoza, Argentina.
In contrast to the massive regional support for Paraguayan democratic institutions and the determination of thousands of Paraguayans to defend them, the ousted Lugo expressed his pessimism over the prospects of restoring constitutional order in his country and said he would not attend the summit in Mendoza, where he was assured the support of the South American community. He explained it by stating, “I don’t want to pressure neither the presidents nor the countries of the region so that they may make decisions.”
Clearly, if the ex bishop of San Pedro does not assume a firm attitude in defense of the representative democracy, the resistance against the parliamentary coup perpetrated in Asuncion the past June 22 will lack clear prospect and that, in such a scenario, Paraguay will suffer the same fate as Honduras in 2009. In other words, a serious regression that is both anti-popular and oligarchic.
