They arrested Efraín Alegre, leader of the Paraguayan opposition …

Paraguayan police arrested to opposition leader Efraín Alegre after justice ordered his preventive prison. The current president of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party of Paraguay (PLRA) arrived at the police headquarters of the Specialized Group in Asunción accompanied by members of his family and hundreds of supporters who followed him in a caravan from the headquarters of the Liberal Party, where the leader spoke with his followers. “The prison will be our trench” Tenuous. The president of the PLRA will be quarantined at the police station and then transferred to the Tacumbú National Penitentiary in the capital Asunción.

From the table of presidents of the opposition political parties, they expressed their rejection of the measure to consider it illegal. “Alegre has been subjected to the process at all times, despite his probative orphan,” they denounced in a statement.

Alegre was indicted by the prosecution for an invoice – which they assume to be false – for the purchase of fuel. The bill appeared in the accountability report for the 2018 elections in the province of Alto Paraná. Defense Efraín Alegre denounced that the accountability report was presented to the electoral justice on June 1, 2018, while the invoice included in the charge file is dated one and a half months after that indicated.

In his defense, Alegre says that as a presidential candidate, he was prohibited by law from managing funds. But the accusation brought by the prosecution to the leader of the opposition is in his capacity as president of the PLRA. In those same 2018 elections, Alegre was rivaled by current Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benítez of the Colorado Conservative Party. Abdo Benítez won with a difference that did not reach four points.

Judge Cinthia Lovera ordered preventive detention of PLRA president because Alegre refused to post bail which amounted to approximately 22 thousand dollars to avoid going to jail while awaiting trial. From the Table of Opposition Parties, they also denounced that the decreed measure had been taken without any “danger of leakage or obstruction”.

The Paraguayan opposition leader has accused former Colorado party chairman Horacio Cartes (2013-2018) and current president Mario Abdo Benítez for their prosecution and detention. “Mafia boss Horacio Manuel Cartes decides today that this president should be jailed, but we are proud to leave as we said at the time because we are not going to accept this flawed process,” said Alegre.

Efraín Alegre has had a long political career since he started participating in liberal youth in 1983. In 2012 he lost to a former right-wing president, Horacio Cartes. Then in 2018, he joined the coalition of left parties called Frente Guasú from where he faced Colorado candidate Mario Abdo Benítez, with whom he lost by a difference of less than four points.

The opposition leader received a visit from the former president and current senator of the Guasu Front, Fernando Lugo. “The clarification of this matter from the beginning is the best. It had its vices and it cannot progress like this.”Lugo said.