THE VIABILITY of the election of the “Red Bishop,” Fernando Lugo, as President of Paraguay lies in the hands of Pope Benedict XVI.On April 20 the former Bishop of San Pedro was elected President of Paraguay, ending the 61-year rule of the Colorado Party.
Lugo received approximately 41 per cent of the vote, besting former education minister and Colorado party candidate Blanca Ovelar who polled 31 per cent, and independent candidate Lino Oviedo — the country’s former army chief, with 20 per cent of the vote.
In a speech to some 80,000 supporters in Asuncion after the results were announced, Lugo --- called the Bishop of the Poor by his supporters and the Red Bishop by his opponents --- said his victory was a “triumph for the Paraguayan population that believed in change and today made it become a reality.”
“Immediately, things will change for the best. You are the heroes of this result,” Lugo said.
Building his support on a coalition of trade unionists, leftists and campesinos (peasants), Lugo was propelled to office, analysts note, by voters sickened by Paraguay’s poverty and rampant corruption.
The Colorado Party came to power in 1947 and until 1962 ruled as a one-party state, where all other political parties were outlawed.
However, Paraguay’s political landscape was formed by the 35-year rule of General Alfredo Stroessner, whom novelist Graham Greene described as looking like “the amiable well-fed host of a Bavarian bierstube.”
Originally elected in 1954, Gen Stroessner was re-elected seven times through the support of the army and the Colorado Party. Though a new constitution in 1992 crafted after the mustachioed general was ousted in a 1989 coup established a multi-party democracy, the Colorado Party has held on to power by virtue of its control of government patronage, employing over 200,000 people in the small South American country.
Born in 1952, the new president, Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez, was a rural school teacher before being ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1977. He served as a missionary in Ecuador for five years and then spent ten years at the Vatican before returning to Paraguay as head of the Divine Word order. In 1994 Pope John Paul II appointed him Bishop of the remote department of San Pedro.
Lugo resigned as Bishop in 2005, under pressure from other members of the country’s Roman Catholic hierarchy for his leftist political views and espousal of liberation theology, and on Dec 25, 2006 announced his candidacy for president under the banner of the Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC) coalition.
Roman Catholic canon law and Paraguayan civil law forbid clergy from holding political office. Following his resignation as Bishop of San Pedro, Lugo petitioned Pope Benedict XVI to be laicized.
However, the Vatican did not accept his resignation and on Jan 20, 2007, the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, suspended Lugo "a divinis.”
The former bishop maintained his clerical status, but was forbidden to exercise his ministry.
Lugo’s petition to be released from his vows was not accepted because "the episcopacy is a service accepted freely forever,” Cardinal Re said.
In a radio interview after his election, Lugo asked Benedict’s forgiveness for his disobedience. "If my attitude and my disobedience of canon law caused sorrow, I sincerely ask forgiveness to the people of the Church. In particular, I ask pardon to Pope Benedict XVI," Lugo told Fe y Alegria radio, noting that he hoped to negotiate a satisfactory solution to the problem of his clerical status.
The final decision to laicize Bishop Lugo rests with the Pope. Failure to laicize the former bishop of San Pedro will undercut Lugo’s election victory.
While he won the popular vote for president, the Colorado Party maintained its hold over the country’s Congress and Judiciary. If his status is not resolved before his August installation as President, litigation is expected from the Colorado Party to block his entering office.
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