Paraguay accused of privatizing public safety.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
Opinion polls about the public image of Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes taken at the end of his first three years in office confirmed what had long been suspected: On average, three out of every four Paraguayans have a poor, or very poor, opinion of the president's performance (NotiSur, May 10, 2013, and May 15, 2015).
Paraguay is perhaps the only country in the region in which opinion polls tend to reflect reality, and in this case the polls showed that all social sectors are highly critical of Cartes. About 67% of the upper class holds the president in low esteem; the proportion of middle class people with a low opinion of the president climbs to 76%; among the lower class, it topped 80%.
After the polls were released, the government attempted to restore Cartes' political image with an offensive that ultimately backfired, leaving the president, his ministers, his closest officials, and his Colorado Party in a harsh spotlight.
A plot to kill the president?
The poll results came out on Aug. 13, Cartes' third anniversary in office, and almost immediately--and remarkably--the government revealed that it had uncovered a plan to assassinate the president. On Sept. 2, a day after a meeting between the president and his top advisers, Paraguayans were surprised by a report of the alleged assassination plan. The plot "led us to take top security measures to protect the president, his family, and all of us that are at this dance," Interior Minister Francisco de Vargas told local journalists and foreign correspondents. After providing an explanation full of contradictions, he said that the government couldn't give details but added that it had credible information provided by a police informant.
Later it was revealed that intelligence services were investigating the alleged payment of US$5 million to a group of Brazilian hit men "hired by drug dealer Jarvis Chimenes Pavao----who has been in a Paraguayan prison since 2009--to destabilize the government and kill the president."
Over the following days, and almost as an homage to the president, the Colorado Party announced that it would push for a constitutional amendment to permit presidential reelection.
The opposition, which at no time accepted the official reports on the plot, responded by calling for the impeachment of Interior Minister de Vargas, and filed legal complaints against Javier Diaz Veron, the current attorney general, and Hugo Vera, the national anti-drug secretary, "for their...
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