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On
Friday, Jun. 30, SIREL interviewed President Lugo, ousted from office through a
subtle constitutional mechanism and a crude process that echoes the June 2009
events in Honduras and puts the entire region in a state of alert.
-The intention is to
confuse national and international public opinion, but what actually happened
here was a coup d’état…
-No doubt about it! The
privately-owned media, which serves certain interests, is trying to give the
impression that it’s business as usual here, that it is merely a natural
presidential succession.
At the same time,
they’re not reporting on the more than 40 spaces and sites of active resistance,
or on the expressions of international solidarity that are proof that something
did happen here.
What we had here was a
rupture in the democratic system. This was a groundless impeachment, a
parliamentary coup. Several terms have been used to describe it: express
coup; Cristina
Kirchner
called it a
soft
coup.
The laboratory for all this was Honduras, three years ago, and here in
Paraguay it was perfected.
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We’re filing an appeal with the Supreme Court of Justice and with
competent international bodies, like the Inter-American Court of
Human Rights, because we believe that what happened was unjust and
constitutes an attack against the will of the people and a violation
of due process guarantees. |
-I
arrived last night and I was surprised by the absence of resistance to the coup.
Is this due to your calls for a peaceful resistance?
-Yes, I’ve called for a peaceful resistance. In the 40 mobilizations that have
been staged so far, there has been no violence. Today, the bridge that connects
us with Brazil was closed for two hours, with demonstrators from
Paraguay joined by Brazilian supporters. The bridge that connects us with
Argentina, in Encarnación, was also closed. People are expressing their
discontent and their outrage. There’s a healthy and peaceful citizen
indignation. But these demonstrations are not covered by the press.
We
specifically called for peaceful demonstrations, with use of force if necessary,
but without violence, and keeping at all times within the country’s legal
system. Demonstrations are not banned and I think citizens across the country
are stirring with a renewed awareness of their civic duty. In seven departments
there have been rallies expressing a strong rejection against the coup, and
these mobilizations will continue, because we believe the will of the people
manifested in the April 20, 2008 elections was trampled with this impeachment or
parliamentary coup.
-You’re asking not to act outside the national legal order, and the coup
perpetrators are claiming that they have not disrupted that order…
-That order was respected, through what is strictly speaking a legal procedure.
But like President Juan Manuel Santos (of Colombia) said, that
legal procedure was perverted, it was forced.
Due
process was not observed, and neither was my right to a defense. Any youth who
commits a traffic violation has two, three, four, even 18 days to prepare his
defense, and I had only 17 hours to prepare mine and just two hours to present
it. When President José P.
Guggiari
(1928-1932) was impeached,
he had
three months to prepare his defense, and others had weeks. I was only given 17
hours.
You
can’t depose a president elected by popular vote in less than 24 hours. Which is
why we’re filing an appeal with the Supreme Court of Justice and with competent
international bodies, like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, because we
believe that what happened was unjust and constitutes an attack against the will
of the people and a violation of due process guarantees.
-Who is behind the Coup?
-Groups that never show their faces. Economic groups, and also the traditional
ruling class, which can’t bear to see different political practices in the
country, political practices that are not based on patronage or privileges, so
common in the traditional parties, which have now joined forces for the first
time ever in history to stage this coup.
-What are you planning to do now?
-We’re going to travel across the country explaining what happened to the
people. On Tuesday, Jul. 3, we’re going to be in Caazapá, then on Thursday, Jul.
5 we’ll be in the townships of Asunción, and so on, touring the entire country.
And like I said, we’re going to bring the case to the Supreme Court of Justice
and competent international bodies.
-What do you think of
the solidarity shown by the governments of the region?
-It’s a reassurance. It
confirms that what happened in Paraguay is cause for concern because it
constitutes a rupture in the democratic order, and the countries of the Americas
have fervently expressed their solidarity with us. We have always said that as a
landlocked country we could not be politically or economically isolated.
Unfortunately that’s exactly what has happened with the coup.
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