A new era, a new headache

ASUNCION - Paraguay awoke yesterday with the realization that things would never be the same. Elections on Sunday brought an end to 61 years of rule by the Colorado party and turned a former bishop into president-elect. Fernando Lugo beat the government candidate, Blanca Ovelar by a margin of 10 percentage points, bringing about the fall of a party widely accused of corruption and nepotism.

Lugo's supporters flood the streets. Photo InfoLatam.com

Long before the official results were announced supporters of the former priest flooded the streets of Asunción, waving flags and honking the horns of their cars. For many people the day marked the real beginning of a democracy despite the fact that the fall of the dictator Alfredo Stroessner took place 18 years ago. For the first time since 1947 the Colorado party was forced to vacate the presidential palace, making way for a new era in Paraguayan history.

Lugo’s victory and the hope he has awakened in those who voted for him is a credit to his charisma and the perception of many people here that he is mild-mannered and honest. He is not, however, an experienced politician or a hardened deal-maker, qualifications which could prove necessary to manage the quagmire that is Paraguayan politics. Nor does he have the backing of one homogeneous party with a single programme. Rather, his supporters range from communists to liberals including left-wing farmers’ collectives and indigenous groups. Lugo’s problems could just be starting.

“People have enormous expectations now and they will be looking to Lugo for rapid answers to the many problems in Paraguay,” says political analyst Roberto Sosa. He fears Paraguayans will expect miracles of the former-priest and be disappointed when they see that change is slow.
The fact is, Paraguay’s ills are of such a scale that any progress is likely to be slow and difficult. 35 percent of the people are unemployed or work in the informal economy. That same amount live in poverty and almost 20 percent are unable to afford a basket of staple foods on a daily basis. Despite economic growth thanks to soaring world commodities prices, that percentage of extremely poor has only increased in recent years.

The agricultural boom which drives Paraguay’s economy has forced thousands of peasants, unable to adapt, to exchange their rural homes for the slums of Asuncion and Buenos Aires. Others left for Spain or the US. Meanwhile rampant crime and a flawed judicial system have made people anxious about their safety and also spawned emigration.

The former bishop has promised his countrymen he will implement a land reform to redistribute wealth in one of the most unequal societies in the region. He has said he will invest heavely in health and education, as well as create the conditions for the thousands of migrants to return home.

To pay for those reforms he says he will confront Brazil and Argentina about renegotiating the royalties from the immense Itaipú and Yacyretá hydro electrical plants that these nation share.
In Itaipú, Brazil and Paraguay share the energy produced 50/50. However Paraguay only uses 5 percent and according to the treaty, must sell the remaining 45 percent to its partner at cost price. On the other hand Brazil paid for the construction of the damn back in the 1960’s

Now the Paraguayans want a market price for their share of the energy. Sectors of the media in Paraguay have been demanding renegotiation of those treaties for several years and Lugo has taken up that banner. But renegotiation won’t be easy. Brazilian president Lula da Silva repeated yesterday what he has been saying all along, that the treaty is non-negotiable. As for Argentina, given its current energy crisis it also unlikely to be an easy negotiating partner.

Getting the political support he needs to face up to Paraguay’s two larger neighbours will be another challenge for Fernando Lugo. The ragtag alliance that brought him to power won’t have anything like a majority in parliament. To get anything done the former bishop will have to work together with ex-general Lino Oviedo. Oviedo came in third in Sunday’s elections but his party Unace party will expectedly hold sway over a key part of the new congress as soon as it’s make-up is definite. Besides, the Colorados will remain the largest party, although reduced in size.

To make matters more complicated Lugo has said on various occasions that Paraguay needs to draw up a new constitution. He insists, with some grounds, that both the judicial system and the parliamentary process need to be redesigned. But opening the Pandora’s box of constitutional reform, maybe setting Paraguay up for the kind of ongoing civil strife that has all but paralyzed neighbouring Bolivia. In Ecuador and Venezuela the process of rewriting the constitution also polarized those countries, pitting two halves of the population against each other.

The good news is that the Catholic Church seems to have accepted Lugo’s choice to swap the pulpit for the soapbox. At first that decision was met with resistance from Rome, where Cardinal Re decided to suspend Lugo. The cardinal insisted that former bishop was nonetheless still a priest and therefore should stay out of politics.

Yesterday, a spokesman for the church in Asuncion declared that the papal nuntius would plead for the former bishop's case with the Pope in the hope of finding a solution to his status, “in the interest of social peace.”