On Monday, Interior Minister, Arnaldo Giuzzio, woke up walking on the cornice. The attack in San Bernardino lowered his price to zero after moving the political hornet’s nest for his denunciation against Horacio Cartes before the Seprelad.
The insecurity was tainted with blood with the murder of the influencer Vita Aranda who was fatally shot by hired assassins. The target of the attack, Marcos Rojas Mora, was shot 8 times and was the other dead of the night. It was at a concert with more than 20,000 people, an event that marks a turning point in the history of drug trafficking in the country: the drug traffickers had never gone so far. They usually settle accounts with each other with assassinations at the border or by directly aiming at the target with daring residential attacks, but this fact is unprecedented and, therefore, disturbing and dangerous.
Society as a whole is at risk of collateral damage.
The San Bernardino case revealed once again how institutions are infected by organized crime. Two other wounded are linked to drug trafficking: José Luis Bogado Quevedo and Marcelo Monteggia. Despite having an international arrest warrant, Bogado walked freely throughout the country thanks to police corruption: His criminal identity was protected thanks to the modification of the Interpol red alert.
With all these scandals, the horror and the pain, Giuzzio’s hours were getting to an end. Declared an enemy of Cartes, whose head he was unable to cut off despite constant pressure, the former president of the Republic found in the impeachment the way to remove Giuzzio from office “due to Marito’s cowardly inaction”. He was able to count on the always timely collaboration of the llanismo, who signed the request. There was no possibility that Giuzzio could be saved. The opposition parties were willing to vote for the impeachment. The ruling party’s wing were enthusiastic, since they have long questioned the fact that a non-colorado was in charge of such a sensitive ministry. To make matters worse, President Mario Abdo added more fuel to the fire with his unfortunate statements indicating that the drug war was going to continue and as a solution he proposed tightening the belts. Such was the indignation that the Aranda family reacted by calling for a demonstration against him.
CHECKMATE. But on Thursday a chess operation took place. With Abdo’s permission, and exogenous support, it is said, Giuzzio went to Congress to fire heavy ammunition. The Congress’ Permanent Commission did not have a quorum, so its president, Lilian Samaniego, moved the first piece of the board: She did not suspend the Minister’s appearance and turned the session into an open informative meeting. The minister took over the stage and held nothing back: He accused Cartes of being a mobster, of being the mastermind of money laundering; he compared him to Pablo Escobar and detailed the alleged financial operations. He showed how, during his administration, the institutions were aligned to his interests and even splashed candidate Santiago Peña, whom he accused of being part of the money-laundering scheme along with his father and brother. Also, that Cartes extorted the President. On his Twitter account, he carved this sentence in stone: “Organized crime started a political, media and legal war against me, precisely because of my position of denouncing their scheme. If I have to go, I will go. But they are not going to silence me, let that be clear to them.”
His strong accusation changed the political scenario. He managed to establish that if he was removed it was not because of insecurity, but as revenge from the mafia for having dared to denounce Cartes. The opposition, which is caught up in the internal party struggle, was absorbed, but by evaluating the damage, they saw that voting against Giuzzio was going to cost them more dearly.
Then Vice President Hugo Velázquez came into play. Very confident, he announced that the ruling party’s wing would not support the impeachment. It was the second time that Velázquez frustrated a political action by Cartes in the Deputies Chamber, the first was in 2017 when he prevented the session to approve the re-election.
The minister not only saved his position, from which he practically said goodbye at that meeting, but also managed to get Marito to finally change the Police commander, Luis Arias, who was considered a key figure of the cartismo, consolidating his position in the Interior.
AGAINST EVERYONE. Giuzzio did not just target Cartes. With his denunciation, he splashed several institutions that are obliged to account for their actions: the Prosecutor’s Office, the Central Bank, the National Development Bank, the Stock Exchange, etc. They have already been summoned by the Vice president to give explanations, and even if nothing happens, what they say will be important because it will document the case. The Prosecutor’s Office, the most compromised for its shameful inaction since 2019, now says that it will investigate as well.
We will see in the next few days if this is not just a simple “squeeze” move.
TRAPPED. Paraguay is trapped in the crises of the Colorado Party that are especially active in the long period of the presidential primaries. The spasms intensify when the dispute for the spoils (State) and the control of the institutions for illicit businesses becomes violent due to shifts of power quotas.
One example was the increase on the tobacco tax. A decision that Mario Abdo had been postponing to avoid conflicts with Cartes and that should have been taken a long time ago not only as an economic measure but also as a public health measure. On Friday, as a sign of his power, it increased from 18 to 20%.
The scenario, for now, draws a resounding defeat of Horacio Cartes. The Giuzzio case marks the field and predicts a tougher dispute between the ruling party and cartismo in the run-up to 2023.
The population is not only hostage to drug trafficking, which, emboldened by the institutional protection of the corrupt elements of the State, decided to settle their disputes with bullets in public acts, thus killing innocent people. It is also hostage to the Colorado Party, which settles its internal accounts without the slightest shame for the collateral damage it has been causing to citizens for decades.