Latinnews Daily - 27 July 2007

Significance: The Movimiento Reconciliación Colorada (MRC) withdrew its support for Duarte on 24 July, stating the party "no longer backs the Blanca Ovelar-Campos and Marí­a Santa Cruz ticket" for the forthcoming April 2008 presidential elections. Former education minister Ovelar-Campos is Duarte's choice presidential candidate for the PC primaries to be held in December.

The MRC declaration follows the supreme court's decision on 23 July to grant ex-general Lino Oviedo, leader of the Unión Nacional de Ciudadanos Éticos (Unace), habeas corpus on the accusation of masterminding former vice-president Luis Marí­a Argaña's assassination in March 1999. The MRC's leader, Senator Nelson Argaña, son of the murdered vice-president, believes that Duarte is behind the court's ruling. Nelson Argaña accused Duarte of acting "merely for electoral convenience". It is widely believed that if Oviedo is released from gaol, he will divide the opposition bloc, the Concertación Nacional, by competing for the presidential candidacy with Fernando Lugo.

Oviedo will currently remain in prison, but he seeks a further habeas corpus on the accusation of responsibility for the deaths of seven youths in a demonstration following Argaña's murder. He is also serving a 10-year prison sentence for an attempted coup against former president Juan Carlos Wasmosy in April 1996.

Duarte has now lost the keystone of his political support and he announced the creation of the new movement after lengthy discussions with ruling PC leaders still loyal to him. The MPC "is born with a commitment to the social sectors, with civil and political freedoms, and to the most needy", Duarte said at a PC office in Asunción . "They [the MRC] can deprive us of a movement", he added, "but they cannot take away our flags and our fighting spirit".

Meanwhile Senator Nelson Argaña has yet to decide whether his movement will support one of the Argaña clan as a new candidate in the primaries or whether they will back PC party leader José Alderete. The other PC candidate is current vice-president Luis Castiglioni.

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