The impeachment of a president is often cited as proof that, in a functioning democracy, everyone is accountable and absolutely no one is above the law. The two most famous cases in recent history both involve US presidents. In 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon resigned rather than face the ignominy of a public trial. In 1998, after the House of Representatives had voted to impeach him on two counts of grand perjury and obstruction of justice following the investigation of real estate dealings prior to his presidency and revelations about his relationship with a White House intern, Bill Clinton was acquitted by the Senate.
Notably, both cases involved lengthy inquiries in the full glare of the media and both men were given ample opportunity to answer the charges brought against them. The bar was thus set for this test of the democratic system, in that the law is deemed to be paramount and there is ample respect for the principles of due process and the individual’s right to defend himself.
In another part of the Americas, just last Friday, Paraguay’s moderate leftist President Fernando Lugo was impeached and removed from office in a 39-4 vote by the country’s Senate, for his alleged mishandling of a clash between farmers and police, the previous Friday, that left at least six police officers and eleven farmers dead.
Mr Lugo, a former Roman Catholic bishop, had been elected in 2008 as the candidate of a diverse coalition of more than a dozen small parties and social movements, opposed to the corruption of the dominant, conservative Colorado Party and committed to agrarian reform and redressing social inequities. It is hugely ironic, therefore, that the incident that precipitated the current crisis resulted from government efforts to evict landless farmers from land owned by a prominent Colorado politician.
President Lugo was also accused of improperly permitting leftist parties to hold a political meeting on an army base in 2009, allowing about 3,000 squatters to invade a large soybean farm, failing to secure the capture of members of a guerrilla group by his government, and signing an international protocol without submitting it to Congress for approval.
The speed with which Mr Lugo was charged, impeached, ousted and replaced by the country’s Vice-president, Federico Franco – the entire process lasted less than two days – has led Mr Lugo to contend that he was the victim of an “express coup d’état,” as due process was not followed and he was denied the time necessary to prepare an adequate defence. Indeed, the overwhelming impression is that the charges were trumped up and that Mr Lugo was the victim of a “parliamentary coup” orchestrated by the Colorado Party and its right-wing allies in Congress. Certainly, what transpired in Paraguay last week bore no resemblance to the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.
Strictly speaking, however, the letter if not the spirit of the law appears to have been followed and the judgment against Mr Lugo seems to be within the bounds of constitutionality, even though Mr Lugo has not benefited from the right to due process. The result is a political crisis in Paraguay and raised hackles across Latin America where the consolidation of democracy is still generally regarded as a work in progress.
Already, Mr Lugo has received strong support from Union of South American Nations (Unasur) members, most of whom have said they do not recognise the new government. The Mercosur trade bloc has suspended Paraguay’s membership and barred the country from taking part in a summit in Argentina. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has said that his government will cut off fuel sales to Paraguay, with the Venezuelan opposition leader, Henrique Capriles, also criticising the move against Mr Lugo. And the Organization of American States has despatched its secretary general to Paraguay to assess the situation.
In Paraguay, with its history of authoritarian rule, the latest development is particularly worrying, especially for those who had seen Mr Lugo’s election as a step forward for democracy and the cause for hope for a more equitable future for all Paraguayans. It may be that Mr Lugo committed too many errors during his presidency, with even his political allies turning against him in the past couple of years. His personal life was not above reproach either, as the former priest had to contend with the scandal of several paternity claims. But it is questionable whether any of this justifies the manipulation of the system to oust him from power.
