Hugh O'Shaughnessy: Lugo confounds his critics

[Judi Lynn]

Lugo confounds his critics
Paraguay's president, Fernando Lugo, has survived for a year, and pulled off a gold-plated deal with Brazil

Hugh O'Shaughnessy
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 15 August 2009 11.00 BST



Fernando Lugo, president of the poor but proud South American republic of Paraguay, has just surprised – astonished – the wiseacres this month by surviving one whole year in office.

When he was inaugurated on 15 August last year, the commentariat, some of his own supporters in Asunción included, were already writing off his chances ever before his donned the red, white and blue presidential sash and started his new job.

He had no real political track record. Here was a lamb entering the den where the lions of the Republican National Movement, known to all as the Colorados or Reds, had ruled since 1947, killing and eating lambs whenever it took their fancy. A year or two before the Chinese Communist party came to power the Colorados' man General Alfredo "El Rubio" Stroessner had been hard at work defending his patch, most of it scrubby wilderness, from Marxism-Leninism in the interests of liberty and the Free World. When his friend Dwight Eisenhower publicly thanked him for his noble efforts the rest of the Free World didn't disagree – at least not audibly. Nobody worried about the death rate among Paraguayan lambs. El Rubio, "Blondie", son of a Bavarian immigrant, held power for nearly four decades undisturbed nearly till the coup d'état in which his son-in-law, also a general, dispatched him into exile in Brazil.

How could Lugo win against the incumbents' political machine, spying, listening and quietly active in their red-painted party premises in even the most distant village? Impossible, was the received wisdom. He had no experience. For a decade he had been bishop of San Pedro, the country's poorest diocese, for God's sake. Then he gave it all up for politics and upset the pope.

But on 20 April last year what seemed a three-legged horse stormed to a landslide victory as the electorate gave a final shudder of rejection of the Colorado. There was a wave of popular enthusiasm for a man with a programme of reform.

The commentariat gulped as the expected scenario started wobbling. But the elected leaders of the region's new left crowded into Asunción to see the installation of their comrade-in-arms and cheered when he started his acceptance in Guaraní, the language most Paraguayans prefer over Spanish. The defeated Colorado incumbent refused to appear to hand over the sash and voters giggled at his pettiness.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/15/lugo-paraguay-anniversary-itaipu