Duarte was invited to the private birthday party of the president of the lower chamber, Hugo Velázquez, along with other members of the opposition, which was held in the house of Deputy Julio Javier Ríos of the ruling Asociación Nacional Republicana-Partido Colorado (ANR-PC). Part way through the evening, a bilious Cartes allegedly ordered that the music be switched off and launched into a tirade against the dissident wing of his own party, singling out various senators. He also allegedly accused FG of seeking to destabilise his government, adding that it would have to “disappear” - a very emotive word in Latin America.
FG subsequently issued a statement cataloguing repeated attacks by the government, claiming that Cartes had spoken of the need to “eliminate” members of the party, including a founder member, former president Fernando Lugo (2008-2012). Some ANR-PC deputies have come out in defence of Cartes, although his criticism of the dissident wing will have served to heighten internal tension.
“The expression voiced by Horacio Cartes and his coterie is a direct threat to democracy, pluralism, diversity of political expression, democrats, an insult to the public, and the most explicit sign of a profound crisis of legitimacy,” the FG statement read. It also alleged that “a massive fraud” was being prepared for municipal elections in November with FG “systematically excluded from the electoral process, and the co-option of all the superior court of electoral justice [TSJE] by the two-party system [the ANR-PC and the Partido Liberal Radical Auténtico], in this way stripping the guarantees for a democratic and transparent election”.
Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo
It is not the first time that FG has been linked to the EPP, which Cartes promised to defeat when he took office in 2013. Velázquez himself claimed on 11 September that FG had links to the EPP. The EPP remains active, although Paraguay’s joint military and police task force (FTC) last week delivered several blows against the Agrupación Campesina Armada (ACA), a tiny EPP splinter group, according to the interior ministry.
On 6 September the FTC arrested two teenagers believed to be members of the ACA while they were riding on a motorbike in the district of Yby Yaú in the north-eastern department of Concepción. They had apparently appeared in videos and photographs of alleged ACA members.
The following day the FTC found both ACA and EPP uniforms in an abandoned Toyota pick-up in Horqueta, Concepción, prompting the authorities to conclude that the two groups had reunited after the ACA broke away last September. The alleged ACA logistics chief, Daniel Rivarola Areco, and presumed owner of the pick-up, was arrested a day later.
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