The task will be completed when we defeat the amendment.By PT – Paraguay
Cartes’ announcement that he will not be a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic in 2018 (- 2023) is a resounding victory achieved by broad sectors of the working people, especially the youth, which expressed in all possible ways its repudiation of the mugging and imposition of the spurious constitutional amendment.
An amendment that, beyond the debate on its legality, deserves a categorical rejection because it serves to reelect known candidates proven to bring more inequality, more concentration of wealth and a more oppressive regime to the working people. No to the reelection of the unpresentable Cartes and Lugo!
We salute the scepticism of all segments of the population before Cartes’ announcement. If the resignation is just a mask game –as many believe–, with the goal of easing the situation and getting off the center of the crisis, while the amendment sits waiting the best moment to be voted in the Deputies Chamber, the price he will pay will be even higher, and the outrage against him will be even broader and much deeper.
There are all kinds of speculations on the reasons for his resignation. It will always be a mix of factors that make pressure in a more or less synchronized way (pressure by the U.S. and/or the Catholic Church), but ultimately –and this is what is essential to the us, the Workers’ Party– it was due to the broad, deep popular rejection to the mugging that these segments of the bourgeois, conservative power were forced to take this measure. It is good to remember the message carried by the accumulated anger of the people when burning the National Congress. It is symbolically paradigmatic.
On this regard, the next station of the tough, firm struggle against the amendment is the Chamber of Deputies and the SJC, both instances subjected to Cartes’ money. To wait for the SJC to pronounce, as the President of Deputies claims, is a cheap excuse and a joke, and we must not accept it. The turncoats that fill the Chamber, as much as the Court, must feel the popular pressure and outrage to end Cartes’ plan to withdraw before suppressing the amendment project once and for all.
Lugo and the Frente Guasu (FG) are progressively sinking in the political and popular vilification. Beyond the known programmatic, political and ethic degeneration of the FG, now they are also the buffoons of a play they thought to be directing or writing. The FG statement is a defensive absurdity which completely denies the political “incineration” they are facing. Even worst: they ridiculously pretend to present the situation as if coldly calculated by them. Abandoned at the cross by the partner they chose to make pacts with, they are now at their most delicate moment, politically speaking: loss of credibility and deep mistrust by giant segments of the population. We cannot feel sorry by the FG and Lugo being in the eye of the storm, because they deserve it.
Llano as his corrupt parliamentarians are looking for something to hold on to. So far, their party (PLRA) suspended their affiliations, while Cartes’ flux of money is restricting. The ‘hitmen’ of any sphere are the ones more exposed. Llano and his gang have a rope around their necks, and they do not deserve a better luck.
The need to open alternative political ways is urgent. The parties, Colorado of Cartes and Marito; Liberal of Llano and Efraín; the FG or the outsiders like Ferreiro are all the same, despite nuances. In this struggle in course, we need to continue developing an independent policy of the working class, because sooner than later we will be living recurrent crisis without a real alternative. We call the vanguard of the unionist and popular movement to urgently move forward on such path.
So far, let’s keep hitting hard and with no pause for the amendment to be thrown out. Down with the excuses of the President of the Chamber of Deputies, who aims to save his own skin and his corrupt deputies passing the ball to the Court.
Out with Cartes!
Out with Lugo!
Down with the Amendment!
National Executive Committee – Workers’ Party.
April 18, 2017.