Golpe de estado in Paraguay

Is this really where people have lowered the bar for what democracy is? I guess political parties shouldn't worry about the office of the president any more. Just win a majority in congress and you can just impeach whoever gets elected in a mere 24 hours. *facepalm*

If this is written into Paraguay's constitution, then Paraguay's constitution is undemocratic and needs to be amended. The only people who should have the right to depose a democratically elected leader based on his political decisions and performance are the same people who elected him via a recall referendum. Not the same fools who lost the presidential election in the first place.

Military coups are too messy for Latin America post 2002. They learned their lessons from the Venezuela cluster f*ck. so I guess the new fad is " congressional " coups. . Honduras was first, now Paraguay, who's next ?
 
PhilipDT said:
Is it really a coup of congress votes within constitutional constraints to impeach him?

Is it really a democracy when a major superpower (with a traditional ally) launches a war against a country that did not attack any of them?

That's semantics obviously but Lugo was impeached in what... two hours?!

Also, is Paraguay a democracy when 2% of the people own 80/90% of the land? I doubt it.
 
Quite similar things could eventually happen in Argentina soon and it's not something to wish for (it wouldn't be necessarily a “coup” from the “Right”, could be one from the “Left” also).

Until now, we’ve heard about “cacerolazos” from the middle classes (and I’m a middle class guy) but wait until the “lower” classes do their own cacerolazos. This will bring many major roads blocked throughout Argentina and such.
Political situation is odd indeed.
 
TheBlackHand said:
Is this really where people have lowered the bar for what democracy is? I guess political parties shouldn't worry about the office of the president any more. Just win a majority in congress and you can just impeach whoever gets elected in a mere 24 hours. *facepalm*

If this is written into Paraguay's constitution, then Paraguay's constitution is undemocratic and needs to be amended. The only people who should have the right to depose a democratically elected leader based on his political decisions and performance are the same people who elected him via a recall referendum. Not the same fools who lost the presidential election in the first place.

Military coups are too messy for Latin America post 2002. They learned their lessons from the Venezuela cluster f*ck. so I guess the new fad is " congressional " coups. . Honduras was first, now Paraguay, who's next ?

Are you really arguing against representative democracy and republican government?
 
PhilipDT said:
Are you really arguing against representative democracy and republican government?

Democracy would mean anticipated elections to clear the issue (they were scheduled for 04/2013).

Will this happen?
 
PhilipDT said:
Are you really arguing against representative democracy and republican government?

I didn't get the sense he was arguing against representative democracy, and republican government, but rather the way that the people in power, WHO DO NOT represent the majority of the people in Paraguay, removed the head of state from power so easily in their particular case.
 
I sent off an email to my lawyer in Asuncion to ask him what he thought of the situation. Last week I was worried about violence and problems. The poor of Paraguay have been screwed for so long, and were so hopeful with Lugo as president, and after hearing what my wife was saying her mother was hearing, I was worried.

Seems like the worry for nothing in relation to violence.

BTW - I had forgotten one very important item that my lawyer mentions. A couple of weeks ago, the parliament had attempted to pass a law that made available funds in the sum of $50M USD to the political parties in Paraguay to finance their political operations. Lugo had vetoed this bill because he was well aware of the political corruption that this causes.

As for the vote in April 2013, there is absolutely no reason that it won't go ahead anyway. Things will go on as usual, the dictators of the country continuing with their BS and the poor people suffering. On top of that, the other unhealthy regimes in this part of the world will now have their excuse to back the new president as the elections supposedly occurred "legally."

I include here my lawyer's email, for anyone who is interested:

Yo no tengo partido político, pero tengo una tendencia anti-partido colorado. El partido colorado y el sistema que impuso durante la dictadura, le hizo mucho mal al Paraguay. Ellos no están arrepentidos y lo unico que buscan es seguir haciendo lo que hacían durante la dictadura.

Aquí en Paraguay, lastimosamente tenes que ser “amigo” de un político o de un pariente de un político, para conseguir logros económicos. Ese tipo de situación no me gusta, y estoy en contra. No puedo asegurar que los que apoyan a Lugo no tengan la misma caracterísitica, pero los que están contra él, estoy seguro que si son así.

Para los políticos (senadores/diputados), Lugo cometió muchos errores políticos. Pero hay que tener en cuenta, que los que dicen eso, son los políticos que están acostumbrados al tipo de política mala (compra de votos, negociando cargos públicos, etc.)

Yo pienso que “El fin, NUNCA justifica los medios”. Si a Lugo había que sacarlo, entonces había que hacerlo a través de las votaciones de abril del 2013, y no, mediante un acuerdo de parlamentarios que están desprestigiados por la mayoría de la ciudadanía, ya que hace 15 días intentaron adjudicarse 50 millones de dolares para financiar a sus operadores políticos. En este caso hubo movilizaciones de la gente y se logró evitar ese robo “legal”. Se evitó dicha ley, mediante que Lugo vetó esa Ley, y yo creo que por eso buscaron una escusa perfecta, y le hicieron el juicio político.

Por otro lado te comento que el paraguayo es un tipo de persona muy tranquilo. Aquí no hubo un solo acto de violencia desde el juicio político. Desde el sabado los comercios trabajan con normalidad. Si esto hubiera ocurrido en cualquier país del mundo, habría mucho más problemas y enfrentamientos. En Paraguay, no habrá problemas en ese sentido. No habrá una guerra civil, ya que la gente que está a favor de Lugo no está con interes de hacer una resistencia violenta.

Lo que más me preocupa es que el Paraguay sea bloqueado por el MERCOSUR y UNASUR, porque ahí si la economía se vería afectada. Una economía que hacía mucho tiempo no tenía tan buenos resultados macroeconómicos, como los que se tuvo. Por otro lado creo que el MERCOSUR y la UNASUR, tienen derecho a bloquernos, puesto que en el Juicio político, no se logró probar ningún fundamento para destituir al presidente. Aquí unos parlamentarios, porque no les gustaba Lugo, lo sacaron.

[FONT=&quot]Espero que con estas pocas palabras, tengas un panorama de la situación.[/FONT]
 
TheBlackHand said:
If this is written into Paraguay's constitution, then Paraguay's constitution is undemocratic and needs to be amended. The only people who should have the right to depose a democratically elected leader based on his political decisions and performance are the same people who elected him via a recall referendum.


Legislative impeachment is part of most "democratic constitutions".
 
PhilipDT said:
Legislative impeachment is part of most "democratic constitutions".

I think your missing the point. In fact, in my opinion, it's skirting around legalities by trying to find loopholes that put most governments, democratic/republican or no, into problems to begin with.

Voting is a part of the democratic process as well, but when people buy a vote, that is not officially part of any democratic institution that I know of, as an example. When a group of people get together and remove a president (the Head of State!), against the obvious wishes of the people, and those people who did the removal are not lawfully elected to begin with (see the email below from my lawyer in Asuncion and other comments related to their voting practices in Paraguay), and no due process whatsoever was involved, it's not a democratically-initiated impeachment.

Even in Paraguay, the ground rules of impeachment don't extend to "because we want to", constitutionally. And they certainly are not supposed to extend no time whatsoever to defend the accused.

Again, impeachment is one thing - that is nothing more than a call to trial for the person involved. That they called the impeachment was bad enough. But the lack of due process involved, i.e., allowing the accused no time to defend himself (less than 24 hours from the time the impeachment was voted on, to the time he was found guilty and removed), puts it beyond the reach of democratic process.
 
If the "impeachment" was illegal i.e didn't follow appropriate/designated constitutional process why has the (ex) President not challenged it and sat tight?

Acquiescent very quickly - Seems he was rather relieved to get out? Live to fight another day? lost all his friends?

Some sort of deal in the background which we won't hear about immediately?

I don't know anything I'm just suspicious there is more than what has come out so far.

Point taken about the elite and their penchant for overtly wielding power

Seems Evo Morales in Bolivia has kept his bum more firmly in the chair - stayed more in touch with his constituency
 
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