Leftist Declared Winner in Salvador’s Election

[Judi Lynn]

23. DU people of conscience have known the truth from the first.

Last edited Fri Mar 14, 2014, 02:03 AM - Edit history (1)

There's no way you can hide behind your wild and reckless footwork, kicking up all the dust you can to cloud the issue. It's as plain as the nose somewhere on your body.

Quickly grabbed references from DU, already posted:

Lessons of the Paraguay Coup

Vinicius Souza and Maria Eugênia Sá
October 16, 2012

Co-opting nationalist soldiers to counter the "red threat" is no longer an essential condition for a successful political overthrow in Latin America. After the failed attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in 2002 and the long deadlock caused by the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, the usual conservative forces—rural and industrial oligarchies, the leadership of the Catholic Church, mainstream media, and U.S. commercial interests—managed to refine the new model for overthrowing popular progressive leaders: parliamentary/media overthrow.

Before removing elected politicians from office, it is necessary to deconstruct their public image through denunciations, whether they be truthful or not, in the mainstream media. Also, lawmakers are enticed by profit sharing in deregulated international businesses in order to ensure a "coating" of legality in the process.

The first victim of this new kind of coup d'état was Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, a former bishop linked to liberation theology, who received more than 40 percent of the vote in 2008 to remove the Colorado Party from office after six decades, which included dictator Alfredo Stroessner's 35 years. During his visit to Brazil for the Rio+20, Lugo was surprised by the opening of an impeachment process (the 24th attempt in four years) that discharged him from office on June 29, in about 36 hours.

The accusations against the president are surreal, ranging from "poor administration of military installations" (due to the cession of a barrack in 2009 for holding a youth event) to incitement of invasion of properties, supporting leftist guerrillas and "attack on sovereignty" (with the signing of the new treaty for the use of Itaipu Hydroelectric Power Plant energy, which was bombarded in Brazil by the local press). Worst of all, though, is that the accusations don't need to be proven true since they are "of public notoriety … in conformity with the current public order," according to the Parliament's document.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11086537

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Paraguay's Forgotten Coup

Did a bloody confrontation over land rights lead to a coup against the country's former President Fernando Lugo?

People and Power Last updated: 26 Dec 2013 18:56

~ snip ~

By filmmaker Reed Lindsay

I first went to Paraguay in September 2002, and was shocked by the country's stark inequalities and seemingly brazen corruption.

One narrow street separated the Senate building from a vast slum of tin-roofed shanties. The economy was propped up by the smuggling of cigarettes and other contraband. And in the latest of a series of scandals, the president at the time was discovered to have been using a stolen BMW as his personal limousine. The brutal 35-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner had come to an end in 1989, but his Colorado Party was still firmly in power, causing many Paraguayans to question the benefits of their fledgling democracy.

But in the countryside, landless campesinos were taking full advantage of the dictatorship's demise. They were organising road-blocking protests and occupying land claimed by powerful businessmen and politicians, acts of defiance that would have been unthinkable under the iron-fisted rule of Stroessner.

However, as in many other Latin American countries, the battle over land in Paraguay played out in relative obscurity.

A decade later, the conflict between campesinos and landowners has taken centre stage politically like nowhere else in the hemisphere, bringing down a president and changing the course of a nation.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/110824875

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Déjà Coup All Over Again
The U.S. is silent as Paraguay follows in the steps of Honduras
BY Jeremy Kryt

Diplomatic relations in Latin America were rocked by the ouster of Paraguay’s President Fernando Lugo on June 22, after a hasty and controversial impeachment trial by the nation’s Congress.

Governments throughout the region denounced the proceedings as an “institutional coup,” and moved to sever ties with their soy-exporting, deeply impoverished neighbor. Meanwhile, in the capital of Asunción, schools shut down, shops closed their doors, and crowds of angry demonstrators took to the streets to protest the toppling of the first freely elected president in the country’s history.

Lugo is the third democratically-elected Latin American leader to be targeted for regime change in the last three years. A police-led uprising against the president of Ecuador was successfully put down in September 2010. A year earlier, in June 2009, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped by soldiers and flown out of the country. As in Paraguay, the Honduran Congress was used to legitimize a puppet government.

A moderate leftist and a former Catholic priest, Lugo had been dragged before Congress on vague charges of “poor performance.” Given 24 hours to prepare a defense, he had just two hours to present his case before the opposition-controlled Senate. The verdict was delivered almost without debate, and the man known as “the Bishop of the Poor” was told to clean out his office—replaced by Vice President Federico Franco, a member of the far-Right opposition. ..................(more)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101639412

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
In the Shadow of Paraguay's Coup: Social Movements Mobilize for Democracy

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10757-in-the-shadow-of-paraguays-coup-social-movements-mobilize-for-democracy

Rain or shine, every Thursday in Asunción, Paraguay, activists gather to protest the right-wing government of Federico Franco, which came to power in a June 22 parliamentary coup against left-leaning president Fernando Lugo. These weekly protests represent a new spirit and strategy of protest in post-coup Paraguay.

The coup gave birth to new corporate agreements, repression of citizens' rights and crackdowns on press freedoms. It also unwittingly created a new panorama of leftist social struggles and movements.
These movements for democracy have risen up against the coup government and the renewed state and corporate assaults on human rights, the environment, and small farmers. Some activists are protesting politically motivated layoffs while others are demanding a new constitution. Beyond questioning the Franco government, these movements are putting forth a progressive agenda in the debate about what kind of country Paraguayans want, regardless of who is in power.

Collective Resistance

"What we are seeing are self-organized protests that are organized collectively," Gabriela Schvartzman Muñoz, the spokeswoman for Movimiento Kuña Pyrenda, a socialist and feminist political movement which organizes the Thursday protests in the capital, explained in a phone interview from Asunción.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11084635

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
A soft coup in South America

July 12, 2012
A soft coup in South America

The questionable removal of President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay by the country’s Senate, nine months before the end of his five-year-term in April 2013, raises questions about the state of democracy in South America, much as the coup in Honduras did three years ago for Central America. For a region with a recent transition to democracy, this is worrisome. For a country like Paraguay, dominated until 2008 by 61 years of uninterrupted rule by the Colorado party of General Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989), that veritable archetype of the Latin American dictator, this is especially so.

Twenty-odd years into democratic transition and consolidation in Latin America, we were hearing that democracy had stabilised, that the concern was no longer of coups, but of the quality of democracy and the latter’s ability to deliver the goods and services citizens expected. Free and fair elections were taking place, alternation in power was the rule and civil liberties and press freedom were respected. The real challenge now, we were told, was how to move from these “low-intensity democracies”, to governments that ensured not just the respect of political and civil rights, but also those of social and economic ones. Latin America’s economic boom over the past decade and the social policies of some governments around the region were starting to make that happen, in a part of the world that continues to have the most unequal distribution of income anywhere.

~snip~
So, how did Paraguay fare under President Lugo? Was the country going down the drain, to “hell in a hand-basket” under the ministrations of the good bishop?

Well, not really. Although hit, like every other country, by the Great Recession of 2008-2009, in 2010, the Paraguayan economy grew 14.5 per cent, one of the highest rates in the world, comparable to the rates clocked by Singapore or some of the Gulf Emirates, and Paraguay’s highest in 30 years. It grew again at 6 per cent in 2011, and prospects are upbeat for this year as well. In other words, the country is booming, and doing better than it ever did in the past. This is largely driven by the cultivation of soya, of which Paraguay has become the fourth largest producer in the world, with 8.4 million tonnes in 2011, and some $1.5 billion in exports, much of it to China. President Lugo, aware of the significance of the Indian market for soya as well, had visited India in May. It is said that soya has become so significant that it has replaced smuggling as Paraguay’s main economic activity.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11084063

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Paraguay: coup backers push for US military bases
Submitted by Weekly News Update on Mon, 07/02/2012 - 23:30.

A group of US generals reportedly visited Paraguay for a meeting with legislators on June 22 to discuss the possibility of building a military base in the Chaco region, which borders on Bolivia in western Paraguay. The meeting coincided with the Congress's sudden impeachment the same day of left-leaning president Fernando Lugo, who at times has opposed a US military presence in the country. In 2009 Lugo cancelled maneuvers that the US Southern Command was planning to hold in Paraguay in 2010 as part of its "New Horizons" program.

More bases in the Chaco are "necessary," rightwing deputy José López Chávez, who presides over the Chamber of Deputies' Committee on Defense, said in a radio interview. Bolivia, governed by socialist president Evo Morales, "constitutes a threat for Paraguay, due to the arms race it's developing," according to López Chávez. Bolivia and Paraguay fought a war over the sparsely populated Chaco from 1932 to 1935, the last major war over territory in South America.

The US has been pushing recently to set up military bases in the Southern Cone, including one in Chile and one in Argentina's northeastern Chaco province, which is close to the Paraguayan Chaco, although it doesn't share a border with Paraguay. Unidentified military sources say that the US has already built infrastructure for its own troops in Paraguayan army installations near the country's borders with Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil; for example, an installation in Mariscal Estigarribia, some 250 km from Bolivia, has a runway almost 3.8 km long, in a country with a very limited air force. (La Jornada, Mexico, July 1, from correspondent in Argentina)

The Chaco is thought to have some oil reserves. Richard González, a representative of Texas-based Crescent Global Oil, announced on June 28 that the company was investing $10 million in the region, starting with exploratory drilling in September or October of this year. The announcement came after Crescent's representatives met with Federico Franco, who was Lugo's vice president before being appointed president by Congress. Supporters of Lugo's ouster claim the investment by the US company could ease Paraguay's total dependence on foreign oil. Venezuela, which supplies 30% of Paraguay's oil, cut off shipments after the removal of the elected president. (Prensa Latina, June 29; La Nación, Paraguay, June 29)

http://www.ww4report.com/node/11243

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
[font size=6] ETC., ETC., ETC. [/font]