Paraguay: A conversation with Aníbal Carrillo, Frente Guasú presidential candidate<http://lo-de-alla.org/2013/04/paraguay-a-conversation-with-anibal-carrillo-frente-guasu-presidential-candidate/>
[image: ((Fernando Lugo, Aníbal Carrillo))]<http://lo-de-alla.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/lugo-carrillo.jpg> ((Fernando Lugo, Aníbal Carrillo)) [Translation of an article from *Punto Final* of Santiago, Chile, for March 8. See original here <http://www.puntofinal.cl/776/carrillo776.php> and related articles here<http://lo-de-alla.org/2012/08/paraguay-lugo-declares-that-paraguayan-left-is-more-united-than-ever/> ,here <http://lo-de-alla.org/2012/06/paraguay-another-honduras/> , here<http://lo-de-alla.org/2012/06/paraguay-landowners-want-to-bring-down-the-lugo-administration/> and here<http://lo-de-alla.org/2012/06/paraguay-violent-confrontation-between-police-and-campesinos-during-eviction/> .] by Claudia Korol Elections will be held in Paraguay on April 21, the first since the parliamentary coup of June 22, 2012, that deposed legitimately elected President Fernando Lugo. The Left is divided into three slates: the Frente Guasú, which promotes the candidacy of pediatric physician Aníbal Carrillo for the presidency of the country and Fernando Lugo for senator, is the majority party in this race. It is made up of the groups País Solidario, Tekojoja, Movimiento Patriótico Popular, Frente Amplio, Partido Comunista Paraguayo, Partido de la Unidad Popular, Convergencia Popular Socialista and Participación Ciudadana. Another slate, which includes Mario Ferreiro for president, is the Avanza País alliance, a Frente Guasú splinter group, made up of the Partido Movimiento al Socialismo, Revolucionario Febrerista, Demócrata Cristiano, Paraguay Tekopyahu and Movimiento Político 20 de Abril. Also participating is the Kuñá Pyrendá party (Womens Platform in the Guaraní language), which is backing two women, former minister Lilian Soto for president and campesina leader Magui Balbuena for vice president. *Punto Final* spoke with the Frente Guasú presidential candidate, pediatric physician Aníbal Carrillo, about the political situation as they face these new elections. The conversation took place before the death, under very questionable circumstances, of retired General Lino Oviedo, a high official in Paraguayan politics who participated in the overthrow of Stroessner and was head of the army until 1996, when he was charged with the assassination of then Vice President Luis María Argaña. Oviedo was also accused of killing civilians during the *Marzo Paraguayo* of 1999 [the political crisis sparked by the assassination of Argaña] and in connection with another attempted coup détat. Paraguayan politics is still rife with high levels of corruption, mafiosi elements and the reign of violence. With Carrillos candidacy, the Frente Guasú is launching an attempt to reverse the strong impact of the coup, carried out in Parliament by means of a summary impeachment, which concluded with Lugos removal from office for poor fulfillment of his functions. In a farse without precedent, the *golpista* parliament granted President Lugo two hours to present his defense. Thus ended the episode that had begun on June 17 with the massacre in Curuguaty. In that confusing, and as yet unclarified, episode, 17 people, including campesinos and police agents, lost their lives. Parliament used that destabilizing event to convict the president and to replace him with Vice President Federico Franco. *Punto Final* spoke with Aníbal Carrillo in Asunción, where he was accompanied by Fernando Lugo and other leaders of the Frente. __________________________________________________________ *What do you hope to bring to this political process with your candidacy?* I am an optimist. I believe that Paraguay has advanced a lot in the past few years. The social movements are growing, and so are political and citizen consciousness. Our organization has developed. We have been through a very rich experience in the government, very fruitful and educational. We are in the context, in Latin America and the world, of a capitalism that, if not dying, is every day more incapable of guiding and leading societies. It is an exhausted model that should make way for new forms of social organization. We are advancing in Paraguay and coming to understand that the electoral process is a stage, a political moment. I consider myself a product of a Paraguayan and Latin American process that will clear the way, because we have thought better about the future than those who rule now. With all these elements combined, I believe that my contribution can be positive if it helps to unite and advance the building of the Frente Guasú, to move forward in the peoples consciousness, in the battle of ideas, so we can have that transforming majority, the only guarantee of change. *What is the situation eight months after the parliamentary coup?* The people need to regain their advocacy, to remain in a state of mobilization and there also needs to be expression through the electoral process. Paraguayan society is divided as never before between a broad democratic society that has been moving forward, that has been growing stronger, and a *golpista* government that has its political base in the Partido Colorado, the Partido Liberal and Patria Querida, the parties complicit in this breach of democracy. The Lugo government was a government of change. It has given the people rights, it has spoken of the universality of rights, of the healing of the public administration; with the understanding that it is currently a corrupt system, it has confronted the judicial power. It was a government that met constant hostility and confrontation from Parliament in everything it did to the social laws and the budget. These are the elements that have allowed our society to mature, in the sense that we have to join forces to carry forward a process that will place the political dispute in better conditions. We have to be open to the regional community and to the process of Latin American integration, which, besides being an economic, political and cultural process, should find the peoples united in defense of their own interests, coordinating a process of social emancipation. *What was the political situation like prior to the Curuguaty massacre?* The previous political context was that of an administration that continued improving in terms of management, that had rejected a budget increase approved by the parliament but met with broad rejection by the people. The judicial power was questioned by a large part of society, especially the members of the Tribunal Superior de la Justicia Electoral. On the other hand, there was growth of the campesino struggle when 4,000 organized campesinos challenged the land owners. You have to remember that the economic base of our country is the income from land held by the large landowners. The campesinos struggle for the legalizing of their lands and for reclaiming public lands. There is not even talk about confiscation or nationalization of the land. They are talking about legal possession of the land and about recuperating ill-gotten lands. That was the spark of an enormous campesino mobilization and a corresponding one by the government, which for the first time took on an investigation into the possession of land of dubious origin. Then came the tragic and symbolic case of the Curuguaty massacre. A group of countrymen, 50 campesinos in struggle, determined to find a source of work and income, occupy productive land granted illegally to an owner. From there an episode developed in which snipers lying in ambush carried out a killing of the police. A confusing situation ensued, provoking a confrontation between the campesinos and the police. There is a second chapter, which was a massacre of campesinos, in which many were executed in a brutal way by the forces of repression. That episode is used to justify the impeachment in congress of Fernando Lugo. Now it is clear that that situation was perfectly well calculated. It was an event meant to collide with public opinion, with several objectives: to interrupt the democratic process, to destroy an elected president, to weaken the strength of a government of change in coming elections. It was also a blow against regional integration. We must not lose sight of the objective of imperialism, to break a process in which Latin America is reclaiming its democratic banners and the sovereignty over its riches. Whats more, it sets out to exploit them for the common benefit of the Latin American peoples. It is a new situation. In the face of the predicament we have always had of an aggressive north extracting the riches of the south, here we have a new situation in which the Latin American peoples are united to become the owners of their own destiny. *The objective of the coup was to stop this process of change?* All this effort to stop change is summed up in a bloody episode like Curuguaty, and in a political act of transcending importance, the removal of President Lugo. All these elements are playing a part, and they are represented today by a *golpista* government that intends a withdrawal in government administration of social policies and the brutal imposition of an economic model that excludes the population, for the benefit of capital, of profits and of the large landowners. It is a government that removes Paraguay from Latin American integration and attempts to leave it by the roadside of history, outside that process, which is irreversible for Latin America. *The holding of elections could be used to legitimze the coup and at the same time the possibility of fraud cannot be ignored. What is the Frente Guasús position in the face of these facts?* In the first place, the elections do not leave aside that there has been an irregular impeachment, the irregular removal of the president, a political coup contrary to the constitution and the democratic spirit. Here the rule of law has been broken, the possibility of competition under equal conditions. To this is added the Tribunal Supremo de Justicia Electoral as an arm of the oligarchic sectors, who attempt to stage a coup and then whitewash it in an electoral process. I have a lot of confidence that the democratic citizenry is the majority in our country, that the democratic will has grown, and that that will can be translated into an electoral landslide. But without doubt there are other political wills that should be evaluated in order for the Frente Guasú to be able to organize the people, to move forward in its consciousness, and identify clearly those enemies of democracy who are governing today and give a definitive blow to the oligarchic and antidemocratic sectors. International solidarity is very important in this context because Latin America should move forward in democracy and those who abandon democracy should be isolated and removed from the region. Latin American cohesiveness is essential, staying united in defense of democracy. In Paraguay, a democratic system has been broken and for that reason continental solidarity is essential. If the conditions for the Paraguayan people to express itself in this electoral contest are appropriate, then, forward! But if they are not, we cannot move into a false popular consultation when the rule of law does not reign, when the institutions have been hijacked, when they hold a monopoly of power, and when a fundamental element, which is control of the electoral process, is prohibited to us. Resistance to the coup was really less than the rejection of it that the people felt. There was a feeling of profound indignation, but this we have to assume, the responsibility was partly that of the political leadership we did not know how to channel that citizen indignation forcefully. I am confident that with the Frente Guasú better structured, better organized, with a more suitable political leadership, we can face this electoral process with a mobilizing, democratic spirit, and with profound respect for the autonomy of the people. If the political and human rights conditions are the right ones for the people to express themselves with liberty and with guarantees, of course we will win the elections. But if not, we will not be so ingenuous as to whitewash the system with elections that are corrupt in their procedures and without equality of conditions for all the citizens. ://lo-de-alla.org/2013/04/paraguay-a-conversation-with-anibal-carrillo-frente-guasu-presidential-candidate/<http://lo-de-alla.org/2013/04/paraguay-a-conversation-with-anibal-carrillo-frente-guasu-presidential-candidate/> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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