The Chamber of Deputies did not have the necessary quorum to deal with the 25 points established on the agenda initially. Therefore, they called an extraordinary meeting where they addressed only 10 points.
The reason for leaving without a quorum was to avoid dealing with sensitive issues. One of them was the intervention of the Governorate of Guaira, administered by Colorado Juan Carlos Vera (Chartist ANR).
CONTEXT
Last February, the Departmental Board of Guairá approved the intervention of the government. This, after detecting irregularities in the management of Governor Vera in the handling of US$ 2 million that the central government delivered to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.
The intervention request had to be dealt with in the extraordinary session of March 30, however, the chartists left without a quorum. Since then, the process has been delayed.
The legislators’ excuse for withdrawing from the session was the questioning of legislators Celeste Amarilla and Kattya González.
The Undersecretariat of State for Taxation (SET) confirmed several administrative irregularities, such as cloned invoices and speaks of a loss of US$ 1 million. Among them, the acquisition of lights for the Guaireña club, an infrastructure that already existed according to the complaint, for which a case of double billing is suspected.
COMPLICITY
Kattya González, national deputy for the Encuentro Nacional party (PEN), pointed out that the order of the day is made up of inconsequential laws and that they should be dealing with laws related to the fight against organized crime.
“Sometime democracy must work. We are going to continue to mourn the deaths of authorities and common citizens. There is no possibility of education, work, health and energy sovereignty if there is no security”, he stated.
He stressed that the minutes of silence are useless if they are not accompanied by serious policies and effective actions.
“It’s practically making fun of us. I made a commitment when I offered my condolences to Governor Ronald Acevedo. I want to reiterate that this agenda is secondary if we do not address the issue of security. The physical security we need,” he commented.
He finally said that insecurity has a first and last name, despite the marketing advice that some want to give.
“If we talk about opening the doors of organized crime, we have to talk about the ANR clique, because it is because of you that the country is like this. They do not want to make us all equal because we are not going to allow them. If this country is as it is, festering insecurity, it is because there is a political group that has historically protected smuggling, organized crime and drug trafficking. This did not fall from the sky. This was the product of the political decisions of people who do not want to serve but to serve themselves and protect their businesses,” she questioned.
GOVERNOR’S VERSION
Juan Carlos Vera, governor of Guairá, gave his version of events to Ñanduti AM a couple of months ago. He stated that he only signed a payment for the lights at the Guaireña stadium.
“There was only one disbursement, there is no double payment. All the constructions that were made with the reactivation fund are done. There are no ghost works. A series of observations came from the Comptroller regarding the reactivation funds that have been met, ”he said.
Deputies prevent drug planes from being shot down
The Chamber of Deputies approved, with modifications, the bill “that modifies articles 2, 5 and 7 of Law 5,400/2015 on Surveillance and Protection of Paraguayan airspace.”
However, the initiative approved by the legislators only establishes the power to fire intimidating shots at suspicious and unidentified aircraft, including drug planes. In other words, they curtailed the spirit of the law that gave the Paraguayan Air Force (FAP) the power to shoot down these planes.
Raúl Latorre, national deputy for the ANR, pointed out that the fight against organized crime requires a reorganization of the security forces.
Latorre argued the elimination of the possibility of shooting down these planes. He argued that the best option is for the process to be carried out in two phases, the first consisting of a verbal warning and the second consisting of warning shots with ammunition containing cartridges.
