Lat-Am Watch: Coup, cries Lugo

Oviedo said to be up to his old tricks in Paraguay

When Fernando Lugo took over the presidency of Paraguay last month after 61 years of rule by the Colorado party, we knew he was in for a rough ride. The Colorados, still entrenched in every corner of bureaucracy and well represented in parliament, were unlikely to make the former bishop's incursion into politics an easy run.

But if Lugo is to be believed, some members of the opposition are more than just obstreperous. They are planning a coup d'état.


In a press conference on Monday morning Lugo accused former president Nicanor Duarte Frutos and opposition leader Lino Oviedo of meeting secretly with the Senate chairman, a superior electoral court judge, a prosecutor and a general in what he called a meeting with "coup intentions."

Basing his accusations on the testimony of the General Máximo Díaz, who apparently was present at the meeting against his own will, Lugo claimed that Díaz had been quizzed by ex-military chief Oviedo about the army's loyalty. The general had immediately reported the incident to his superiors.

"As president I will not allow the armed forces to be used for sectarian interests. I call on the public to be alert for possible coup attempts. We will not permit an attack against the freedom of our people," the president declared.

In a later press conference Lino Oviedo confirmed meeting with ex-president Duarte Frutos, but said the meeting on Sunday night had been about rallying to "support the government of Lugo."

As for the General Díaz, Oviedo denied that the soldier had been in his house at the time.

Manuel González Quintana, who belongs to Oviedo's UNACE party and is speaker of the senate, immediately denied having being present at any such meeting, as did the controversial judge Juan Manuel Morales, whose rulings have favoured Duarte Frutos on too many occasions in the past.

These accusations of an alleged coup are inextricably linked to the current crisis in the Paraguayan senate.

A stalemate has occurred in the upper chamber after González Quintana and a few other Oviedo-supporters allowed Nicanor Duarte to swear-in as senator, despite the majority of the house insisting he be named senator-for-life, as the constitution mandates for a former president. That role would strip him of the right to actually vote, which is why Duarte ran for senator during the last elections, in the hope of maintaining his influence.

The theory holds that Oviedo and Duarte are in league with each other to bring about the downfall of Lugo and his vice-president Federico Franco, placing senate speaker González Quintana in line for the throne. That's how the editorial of ABC Color, Paraguay's leading newspaper, put it on Sunday.

"There's no doubt that Oviedo and Duarte are trying to destabilize Lugo's government, " says Roberto Gonzalez, a political analyst for the newspaper on the phone from Asunción. "But if they really met to discuss a coup then it's backfired considerably, because the public is outraged," González explained. Social movements have announced a mass rally in support of president Lugo to be held on Thursday.

In fact, the whole affair looks like it could be panning out well for the fledgling government of the former prelate. Now that the "coup-plotters" have supposedly been outed, the senate confrontation looks likely to end with the dismissal of González Quintana as speaker and the reversal of Duarte's installment as ordinary senator.

Of course, as the journalist González points out, Lugo could be making the whole thing up precisely to get his way in the upper chamber and discredit his enemies. In Paraguay nothing is ever straightforward.

The truth is the government has made a lot of mistakes in dealing with the situation in the senate. In a ham-fisted attempt to appoint two elected senators as ministers and fill their places with loyalists instead of following the constitutional rules, Lugo and consorts paved the way for Duarte Frutos own display of bending the law in the upper chamber.

The worst mistake though, was to allow congress to appoint a lackey of Lino Oviedo as senate speaker.

For those unfamiliar with the man's record, Oviedo has already been convicted of a coup once in his life, in 1996. Oviedo also participated in the coup against the dictator Alfredo Stroessner in 1989, not to mention his alleged involvement in the murder of vice-president Luis Argaña in 1999. While he was in hiding in Brazil his supporters in the military attempted to overthrow an elected government in May of 2000. In short, he's an enemy of democracy.

Yet, after coming third in the presidential elections this year, Oviedo offered to support Lugo's allies in parliament. An offer that the former bishop snapped up too quickly. Now, that honeymoon seems to have come to a nasty end.

From now on Lugo will have to look for allies in the ranks of the Colorado party, whose hegemony he ended with his historic victory on April 20. That's not as bizarre as it sounds.

There are many among the ANR (as the party is officially called) who are sick of Duarte Frutos openly corrupt dealings and who blame him for the electoral defeat. Foremost among them is Luis Castiglioni, who claims he was cheated out of the party nomination by the ex-president, in favour of April's loser Blanca Ovelar.

Lugo should seize this chance to reach out to all those in the sprawling Colorado party who reject the back-room machinations and the scheming with generals and want to see Paraguay progress as an open democracy. There are probably more of them than he thinks.