The President of the Republic, Mario Abdo Benítez, on Thursday urged all American countries to combat organized crime and gave as an example the collaboration between Colombia and Paraguay to arrest those allegedly responsible for the murder of prosecutor Marcelo Pecci.
Source: EFE
“I make a call in this forum to defend the rule of law, not to give truce to organized crime, which seeks to occupy spaces that only correspond to representatives of the popular will,” he said before the plenary session of the IX Summit of the Americas, held in Los Angeles (USA).
Abdo Benítez defended that organized crime “is transnational”, so “the answer must also be transnational”.
In this sense, he stressed that the joint work between the Colombian and Paraguayan authorities led to “immediate operations” that allowed the arrest of those allegedly responsible for the death of Pecci, a renowned Paraguayan anti-mafia prosecutor who was shot dead on May 10 on the island. Colombian from Baru.
“That is the path that Paraguay wants to follow,” claimed the president, who thanked his Colombian counterpart, Iván Duque, for the capture of the alleged murderers.
The president also claimed “constitutional democracy as an indisputable form of political coexistence”, before a controversial summit due to the decision of the United States to exclude Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, since it does not consider them democratic.
Abdo Benítez said that Paraguay “has been walking the path of democratic consolidation with firm steps” and paraphrased the Paraguayan intellectual Natalicio González by stating that the American countries have the “moral imperative” to serve “free men and women.”
“With democracy on one hand and the rule of law on the other, we participate with emotion (in this summit),” he concluded.
In contrast, other leaders such as the Mexican, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, canceled their participation due to the exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
