NOTE: If you were incorrectly directed here and are looking for the Fall 2011 Table of Contents, please access it here.
The Paraguayan Congress on Thursday rejected a constitutional amendment that would allow presidential re-election. Supporters of President Fernando Lugo’s Alianza Patriótica por el Cambio (Patriotic Alliance for Change—APC) party presented the opposition-controlled Congress with a petition of 100,000 signatures urging lawmakers to overturn one-term limit that dates back to 1992. But after Thursday’s ruling, President Lugo—who has claimed no interest in running for re-election—will leave office at the end of his first term in August 2013.
Several supporters of the amendment walked out of the hearing in protest of the decision, including Senator Carlos Filizzola, who said, “We are turning our backs on the country, they have smacked the citizens.” But Senator Lilian Samaniego was skeptical of the president’s stance on the re-election issue, saying the “campaign for re-election is encouraged by the president of the Republic, who with his classic ambiguity intended to appear as alien to the attempted constitutional violation.”
Lugo was elected in 2008, ending six decades of rule by the Colorado Party on pledges to champion the needs of the poor.
