Asunción, April 20 (EFE).- On April 20, 2008, exactly fifteen years ago, ex-bishop Fernando Lugo made history in Paraguay, by becoming the first opposition member elected president after six decades of Colorado Party governments.
Now Paraguay is preparing for general elections in which Coloradism, with Santiago Peña as a candidate for the Presidency, seeks to remain for a third consecutive term in front of the Government and maintain its majority in Congress.
While a former minister from Lugo, Efraín Alegre, supported by the National Concertation -a coalition whose formation was promoted by the former ruler-, is the opposition candidate.
For his part, Lugo himself heads the list of candidates for the Senate in these elections for the left-wing alliance Frente Guasu, with which he won a seat in the Upper House in 2013.
At 71 years old, the now ex-bishop of the Diocese of the department of San Pedro is recovering from a stroke that keeps him away from the media, while he is undergoing his rehabilitation process.
However, he continues to be, in the opinion of different sectors, a political benchmark and especially a leader of the opposition in the country.
A SOCIAL FACE
“Today the political leader most accepted by the citizens in Paraguay continues to be Fernando Lugo,” the senator and former minister during her administration (2008-2012) Esperanza Martínez told EFE.
This political leader considers that “the first democratic transition by popular vote of the National Government” led by Lugo had a “very special significance for democracy” in Paraguay, as far as political alternation is concerned.
But also because of the political figure he represented: “a priest in a highly Catholic country, practicing -complements Martínez-, who came from the poorest areas of Paraguay, who had been in the struggles, in the closure of peasant routes, demonstrations and political or social arrests”.
“And it also meant the entry of a government with more of a social face,” he highlights.
Lugo, backed by the Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC), was elected with 40.9% of the votes compared to 30.6% for Blanca Ovelar, the candidate of the Colorado Party or National Republican Alliance (ANR).
On August 15, 2008, the progressive leader was sworn in. It was the first time in 61 years -a period that includes the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989)- that the colorados were not in power.
Lugo’s election was the second on the continent involving a former Catholic priest.
Haitian Jean-Bertrand Aristide, after being expelled from the Salesian order, won the Presidency of his country in 1990. Aristide also governed from 1993 to 1996 and between 2001 and 2004.
Two weeks before his inauguration, in an unprecedented decision, the then Pope Benedict XVI dispensed Lugo from his clerical state, previously sanctioned with suspension a divinis.
However, the progressive leader’s term ended abruptly.
On June 22, 2012, the Senate dismissed Lugo after a controversial impeachment trial promoted in Congress after the death of eleven peasants and six police officers during a land eviction.
DEALING WITH PROBLEMS
Fifteen years after the opposition’s victory, Martínez, who is also running for the Senate for the Guasu Front and backs the Concertación Nacional, points out that Paraguay still needs to face serious problems, such as social exclusion, poverty and “privileges for a small group of the population linked to corruption and national and transnational business”.
And he emphasizes that it is necessary to address problems such as corruption, money laundering, drug trafficking and other events that, in his opinion, show a “deterioration of democratic institutions” and the “quality of politics” in this country.
Laura Barros