12-04-2017: Latin American Weekly Report

Paraguay is engulfed in a political crisis. An attempt by a group of national legislators to push through congress a constitutional amendment introducing presidential re-election, which is rejected as unconstitutional by the political opposition, has produced serious unrest. Anti-re-election protesters stormed and torched the national congress to try to stop the passage of the amendment bill, which led to violent clashes with the police that left one person dead, dozens injured, and hundreds of others under arrest. The last time that such unrest was registered in Paraguay was in the March 1999 ‘Marzo Paraguayo’, which was only resolved after the then- president Raúl Cubas Grau resigned and abandoned the country.