Popular demand grows for the President of Paraguay to step down

The main allegation is linked to the lack of medicines for coronavirus patients, the collapse of the inpatient capacity of hospitals and the delay in the arrival of vaccines, but also the alleged corruption with which the government has managed the purchase of supplies to deal with the pandemic.

Mostly dressed in the white national football team jerseys and banners with various slogans – including “Out with Marito” and “until he resigns, every day” – the protesters installed a ” megaphone in front of the open presidential residence “for every citizen to express his demands.

The call for this Sunday’s protest began circulating this morning on social media under the hashtag # I’mParaElMarzo2021, #QueSeVayanTodos and #FueraMarito.

The appeal concerns “self-summoned citizens, workers in bars and nightclubs, relatives of coronavirus patients, relatives and friends of fatal victims of the disease and others.”

Likewise, the national police deployed a strong security device around the building, to avoid a repetition of the unrest of the previous two nights, when groups of demonstrators clashed with the men in uniform.

On Friday, the clashes took place near Congress and on Saturday evening, outside the presidential residence, when protesters attempted to demolish the containment fences, resulting in the arrest of eight people who were released on Sunday afternoon.

In a report to the prosecution, the national police attributed the riots on Friday to two dozen members of the barra brava of the Cerro Porteño club – four of whom have been identified – who allegedly infiltrated two groups among the protesters, according to the newspaper Asuncion La Nación. .

Meanwhile, most opposition parties have demanded the removal of Abdo Benítez and vice-president Hugo Velázquez from the government, according to the newspaper Ultima Hora.

“There was a totalitarian attitude in the repression of the demonstration; the president and the vice-president must leave and the people must decide who will come ”, declared the president of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA), Efraín Alegre, after a meeting of the table of presidents of the parties of ‘opposition.

“The president’s problem is not with those demanding the impeachment of Congress; The difficulty of this Colorado government is in the streets, in the exhaustion of so much corruption; the changes announced are demands of the leaders and not of the citizens who want dignity and courage, ”said MP Kattya González of the National Meeting Party (PEN).

At the same time, PLRA deputies were preparing to start conversations with their colleagues from other opposition benches in order to muster the number needed to promote the impeachment of Abdo Benítez and Velázquez.

The initiative might even have the backing of Honor Colorado, the section of Colorado’s ruling party that responds to former President Horacio Cartes and that faces that of Abdo Benítez, but only once he gets it. sufficient consensus in the opposition, suggested the general prosecutor of the force, Eduardo González.

“Honor Colorado was against the government and this was demonstrated not only by words but by actions, but Abdo Benítez’s support does not depend only on Honor Colorado but on the opposition raising something coherent that until now are just words, ”González said.