Posts tagged #Fernando Lugo

The dubious removal of Paraguay's former bishop president

By Rodrigo Acuña

Eureka Street

2 July 2012

The recent questionable removal of Paraguay’s left-wing president Fernando Lugo probably broke some type of world record.

With just two hours for Lugo’s lawyers to prepare his defence, the former Catholic clergyman, once known as ‘Bishop of the Poor’, was ousted in a 39-4 vote by the Senate within twenty-four hours of his original impeachment.

Denouncing his removal from the presidency, in which he still had a year left to serve, Lugo summarised the event as a 'parliamentary coup d’état'. He has a point.

Paraguay: how Lugo Méndez went from Bishop to President

By Rodrigo Acuña

The Diplomat

May 2008

The recent election of ex-Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo Méndez in Paraguay has seen another leftist leader take office in Latin America. With a ten-point lead over his nearest rival Blanca Ovelar, Lugo’s centre-left Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC) obtained a convincing 41 per cent of the vote seeing the end of the Colorado Party’s rule since 1947.

As one observer has noted, throughout Paraguay, Lugo’s victory has been celebrated as if the era of General Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship (1954-1989) were finally at an end.