PhilinBSAS said:
Well - I saw on the news yesterday while grabbing a bite in Jumbo that the removal was challenged and the Paraguayan supreme court refused to hear it. I can't believe that the supreme court, which has been assigned by Colorado party members (as it has been they who have been in power for 65 years with a 4 year hiatus in the presidency alone) would turn their backs on their democratic institutions
I seem to have mentioned many times that there were indeed many backroom deals made, although I didn't call it that specifically. What I have said was more like corruption and dictatorship. My lawyer, in his comments I posted made the same comment.
I also, on my lawyer's comments, was reminded of the probable reason for the impeachment and removal to begin with - Lugo's veto of a bill to give $50M USD to the political parties so they can begin buying votes for the April 2013 election. When that bill was announced, the people themselves were demonstrating against it, and Lugo vetoed it.
Dude, I'm sorry to say this, but your comments here indicate you really have no idea what's going on in Paraguay, particularly when you compare Lugo's situation to Morales in Bolivia staying in touch with his constituency. In Lugo's situation - I didn't realize his constituency were the senators and congressmen who ousted him. I really thought his constituency were the people of Paraguay themselves, who elected him and were at the point of causing some serious problems for the government until they backed down because, as my lawyer said, the Paraguayan people are pretty peaceful overall. I can assure you the great majority of Lugo's constituents were not pleased with what happened to him.
And my point wasn't simply that the elite wield power overtly there - the Colorado party have a tight grasp on Paraguay and obviously rule as dictators, bypassing all of the time the constitution. They buy votes, they buy elected offices from candidates outside of their party who win, they intimidate people, and never a problem with the courts and such. Why? Because it's all owned by Colorado.
And you have a suspicion that something else is behind his removal? Like what?
The congressmen who ousted him say that he was somehow involved in a land dispute where rich people who were given land back in the 80s by a dictator were trying to oust the poor people who claim that the land was theirs back then and they wanted it back. People died and were injured. Lugo says he is going to open an investigation, but before he can even do that, he's impeached and then removed from office. Many in Paraguay think the Colorado party was behind this to begin with, instigating the problem and then taking advantage of a pretense to remove him from office, because they certainly couldn't just come out and say "we want our $50M USD and we're going to remove you if you don't give it to us."
And if Lugo was somehow behind the land dispute, as the impeachment claimed, why wasn't he given time to defend himself? This certainly wasn't the first land dispute to have happened during Lugo's term.
Maybe it was his one officially acknowledged son born out of wedlock that was behind the desire to oust him? Or the 8 others who came out of the woodwork and said he fathered their kids as well? Colorado tried to besmirch his name with that long ago but were rebuffed by the people who said "what the hell do we care if a man has masculine appetites as long as he's honest and thinks about more than the rich and powerful in our country?"
Is he tired? Absolutely. But that isn't the reason he gave up the office. He's an ex-Catholic bishop, supposedly a man of peace, and he saw the only thing that his trying to stay in power would do is cause more problems in the country - and no matter what he did, he would not be able to retain the presidency in front of the obvious kangaroo court that was called.
He fought every day of his presidency against the idiots in power there. He had cancer and went through treatments in Brasil (while Colorado party members were saying publicly that they hoped he succumbed to the disease). Of course he's tired. But yet, he still is attending MERCORSUR and UNASUR meetings as the head of state of Paraguay because those institutions don't recognize the new president as valid. If it was just that he was tired, I don't think he'd be doing any of that.
And I want to see what he's really trying to do there as well, in MERCOSUR and UNASUR. It would be nice if he's trying to mitigate the damage the Paraguayan congress did to the country internationally. We are going there in July to help my wife's family plan on how to improve their (currently) subsistence farming with some irrigation systems. That won't do us any good if no one regionally wants to buy things like strawberries, onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, etc - no markets in which to sell them. So maybe the poor get screwed again, because those in power can weather something like that with no problem, until the next elections.
There was nothing democratic in what happened in Paraguay. You can split hairs and try to down-play what happened, but that's pretty typical of South American government here when it comes to their own internal politics anyway - it doesn't make it right and certainly doesn't make it democratic.
And as far as having friends - Franco, the ex-vice president who is now president, gave Lugo fits and starts the whole time. Most of Lugo's supposed friends pretty much fled from him after he was elected, after being pressured by Colorado elements.
He had no friends at all, except the people, who were proven to be irrelevant by their own government.
