Brazil & Southern Cone - June 2012 (ISSN 1741-4431)

Paraguayans unhappy with their politicians and are making their feelings known ahead of scheduled general elections in 2013. Conscious of this, the political class has become more sensitive to the demands of civil society and has been spurred into action all of a sudden. While there is still a long way to go before the changes demanded by the public become reality, the very fact that voters have realised that they hold sway over their political representatives is encouraging. Furthermore, citizens are showing a new determination to see their demands through, whatever the resistance from the political class.

It all started on 24 May when, in a highly controversial decision, the congress approved a proposal to increase this year’s budget for the supreme electoral tribunal (TSJE) by US$50m, so that it could hire up to 8,000 new staff, purportedly to register Paraguayan expatriates ahead of the 2013 elections, in which expats will be able to vote for the first time. The congressional move was strongly opposed by the executive. Finance Minister Dionisio Borda pointed out that in times of austerity the congress should prioritise investment spending, rather than inflating the already bloated state payroll. The government vetoed the measure, but the lower house immediately voted against the veto, with the senate expected to follow suit, allowing it to be overturned.

However Borda’s comments struck a chord with the public, not least because the TSJE, like many other state institutions, has a reputation of being used by political parties to distribute political favours, typically by hiring party affiliates to work as political operators on their behalf. These operators are known locally as ‘planilleros’– employees that appear on official state payrolls (planillas) but don’t actually do any work. Civil society groups described the move to increase the TSJE budget as a blatant attempt to extend political clientelism. Some groups organise an impromptu demonstration outside congress in protest and the demonstration proved such a success, drawing hundreds of people, that another mass demo outside the congress was scheduled on 29 May.

To much surprise, this call to action got results. In the face of public pressure, the senate convened an extraordinary session for 29 May to address the government’s veto, and in the end voted to uphold it. However if the senate thought that that would be enough it was mistaken. Although the civil society groups welcomed the senate decision, they went ahead with the demo as planned, and used the protest to call upon congress to address some of the other pending political issues, such as a resolution of a lengthy crisis in the judiciary over the refusal of seven supreme court judges whose mandates have expired to step down [RBS-12-04] and a call to do away with the so-called blanket lists currently used in congressional elections. Over a thousand people took part in the second protest and in subsequent days the demos spread to other cities, including Encarnación, Ciudad del Este and Pilar. The upshot was that on 31 May representatives from the chamber of deputies introduced a formal libel accusation against seven CSJ judges, the first step in their impeachment process.

The protestors vowed to continue with their mobilisations until congress barred the use of blanket lists in the 2013 elections. However on that point congress refused to buckle, and on 5 June voted to it postpone the discussion of blanket lists until 2015. This was to be expected; after all congressional would not want any change that might affect their prospects of re-election in 2013. This setback prompted an angry and violent reaction by some of the demonstrators, who attacked and vandalised the headquarters of the two main parties, Partido Liberal Radical Auténtico and Asociación Nacional Republicana- Partido Colorado. Congress said that it would not be intimidated. Civic leaders said they did not condone the violence and pledged to continue with peaceful demonstrations.

• Lugo conspicuously absent

President Fernando Lugo, as often seems to be the case in times of crisis, was out of the country, this time on an 18-day tour of Asia. On 24 May Lugo became the first Paraguayan president to officially visit India. It was left to Vice-President Federico Franco to deal with the domestic protests. On 31 May, commenting on the decision by the senate to uphold the government veto, Franco recognised that it had been “a triumph of the people”. Franco added that in a true representative democracy “[political] parties and congress must listen to the people”.