Carolina Pimentel and Luciana Lima Reporters Agência Brasil (Renata Giraldi and Danilo Macedo contributed)

Brasília – An impeachment process was unexpectedly opened against the president of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, in the Chamber of Deputies on Thursday, June 21, and approved by a wide majority. The Senate of Paraguay voted on Friday, June 22, to impeach Lugo, by a vote of 39 to 4, with 2 absences (there are 45 senators and 30 votes are necessary for impeachment).The whole impeachment process took about 30 hours from beginning to end.

Lugo, a former Catholic bishop and leftist reformer long involved in social welfare projects, was elected in president of Paraguay in August 2008.

The vice president, Federico Franco, who supported the movement to impeach Lugo, is a member of the Partido Liberal.

Meanwhile, social activists were out in the streets protesting.

Lugo faced five charges by members of a Congress that had turned overwhelmingly against him: 1) supporting a movement of young leftists in the Engineering Corps of the Armed Forces in 2009; 2) making military personnel obey orders by members of the landless rural worker movement; 3) incompetence in the fight against acts of violence, 4) lack of effort to combat the guerrillas of the EPP (that resulted in a land ownership dispute last week where 17 people died; 5) violation of Paraguayan laws when he ratified the Ushuaia 2 Protocol on external intervention in case of threats to democracy in Paraguay.

Lugo’s lawyers claim the impeachment process was an example of political persecution, that the trial was a political judgemnt conducted illegally and unjustly. Finally, Lugo’s defense says that there is no proof of any breach of faith while he was exercising the presidency.

Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English

Link - Fernando Lugo é afastado da Presidência do Paraguai