Yearbook 2017
Paraguay. The year ended with the political temperature
rising before the presidential and congressional elections
in April 2018. In September, the two largest opposition
parties PLRA (The True Liberal Radical Party) and Frente
Guasú (FG) entered into an election alliance to try to
defeat the ruling ANR PC (National Republican Organization-
Colorado Party), which ruled Paraguay for a total of 70
years. In the primary elections on December 17, Senator
Mario Abdo Benitez was elected ANR-PC's presidential
candidate. He is a controversial politician with ties to the
former Stroessner dictatorship (1954–89). The election was
seen as a direct challenge to incumbent President Horacio
Cartes, whose faction within the deeply divided party
supported another candidate. PLRA was also fragmented but
managed to agree with FG to elect attorney Efraín Alegre as
the alliance's presidential candidate.
According to
Countryaah.com, a strong contributing reason for the split in both
parties was that supporters of President Cartes in the
Senate at the end of March sought support for a change to
the Constitution so that he could be re-elected in April
2018. The proposal met with great opposition from both
opposition parties, who claimed that it was illegal and
launched a campaign for a judicial process against the
president, and among Carte's opponents in his own party.
After a month of street protests and attacks on the congress
building, the proposal was withdrawn.
A massacre in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero on the
border with Brazil at the end of July focused on the
influence of organized Brazilian crime in Paraguay. Four
people were killed and six injured when members of Brazil's
largest narcotic Primeiro Comando da Capital opened fire on
a nightclub in the city in what is believed to be a deal
between leagues. Similar events occurred in April in Ciudad
del Este, another border town further south. Tensions
between the EPP guerrilla group (Ejército del Pueblo
Paraguayo) and paramilitary militia groups also increased
during the year with kidnappings and disappearances.
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