Nery Peña, journalist and dean of the Faculty of Education and Human Sciences at UniNorte, is running for Senate for the Alianza Encuentro Nacional (AEN). She affirms that her incursion into the political arena took place at the invitation of Kattya González, a national deputy for the PEN and a candidate for the Senate for the AEN.
How did this step in politics come about?
I received the invitation from Deputy Kattya González on June 8. At first I didn’t know whether to accept. I have 24 years of profession in journalism. I was always on radio Ñanduti AM. I went through all the stages, from production assistant, producer, chronicler, I worked at Ñanduti at night with Nicolás Argüello in “Life is still the same.” Later with Aníbal Gómez Caballero, I spent the morning with Humberto, with Hugo. He made the television productions of the program “Humberto Rubín”, after “El Saber va tú”. In 2015 I disconnected, I went to Ciudad del Este to the television station of the East and from there we returned to Asunción again with C9N and then back to Ñanduti. I always did programs, sometimes not so journalistic, but cultural. The last one was “The Library”.
Your interest is in journalism and education…
The other stage is that I am dean of the Faculty of Education and Human Sciences at UniNorte, director of the journalism career. He never crossed my mind, getting involved in politics, what’s more, Humberto Rubín told me that “one goes from having a slingshot to being a shop window.” Paraguay needs committed people, our country needs committed people. And I think I can contribute, from the Senate with a vision towards education and also with a vision towards the protection of journalists and colleagues. For example, with great pain yesterday I was listening to what the prosecutor Katia Uemura said that a murdered journalist “took himself away”. A Paraguayan has to have the guarantee of being able to go out on the street. Not that a person who is representing justice.
Why did you choose the Alianza Encuentro Nacional (AEN)?
I chose him for his testimony of struggle. Most of its members demonstrate day by day the fight against corruption. Kattya is being a great deputy. In relation to those strong complaints, his firm position and in reality when they called me and I found out who was going to make up the team, people like Patrick Kemper, Fernando Camacho, José Antonio Galeano, Amilcar Ferreira, and I began to analyze. So I said that they are people who have really worked for the country from the sector that has touched them with integrity. They casually told me the etymological definition of the word idiot, and that touched me. The definition is that they are those people who were not interested in being or serving in the public sector. And there I understood many things.
What would be your projects if you are elected?
The first project I want is a protection system for journalists. We must guarantee an independent press. And give the journalist worker, not the media, the protection mechanism. If a strong complaint is made, against drug trafficking, against smuggling, against whatever it is, his integrity and that of his family is guaranteed. The other point is to see a true educational reform, where the axis of education is the individual. The student who leaves basic and secondary education does not know how to read or interpret. The less knowledge and the less interpretation, the more opportunity is given to the tyrant. Education is not centered on the individual. We are mixing, doing experiments that do not fit the Paraguayan reality. Education lost its way.
Who is Nery Pena?
He is a person with dreams of having an educated Paraguay, of having a country with freedom and of having a country with great economic growth. Peña has dreams that he respects people but he also has fears. And it is against those fears that he is fighting. One of the great fears is losing freedom. It is being able to lose what it cost so much to fight for so many people; freedom. That is the greatest fear and if we continue like this we run that risk. Criminals in the country are being empowered. Drug trafficking has its representatives in the political ranks, inside Congress it is known that people have financed money from drug trafficking. However, the honest one cannot go to the hospital because he does not have one.
