BRAZIL-PARAGUAY: Oviedo’s Release Sparks Tension

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 18 2001 (IPS) - A new political squabble was sparked within South America’s Mercosur trade bloc by a Brazilian court decision that released former Paraguayan general Lino Oviedo Tuesday, who is wanted in his country in connection with the assassination of former vice-president Luis María Argaña.

Upon leaving the military police barracks where he was being held in Brasilia, Oviedo announced that he intended to return to Paraguay within three months, to run for the presidency in the 2003 elections.

The former armed forces chief was taken into custody on Jun 11, 2000 in the town of Foz de Iguacu on the border with Paraguay, on a request by the Paraguayan government, which accuses Oviedo of masterminding the Mar 23, 1999 murder of Argaña in Asuncion.

The former general was released Tuesday after Brazil’s 11- member Supreme Federal Court unanimously denied a request Monday that Oviedo be extradited to Paraguay.

The magistrates ruled that the extradition request was politically motivated – which is prohibited by the Brazilian constitution – because the Paraguayan courts acquitted other suspects charged with complicity in Argaña’s murder.

The possibility of deporting Oviedo on grounds that he had entered the country illegally was also ruled out by the president of the Supreme Federal Court, Marco Aurelio de Mello.

That decision was based on a 1980 law that bars deportation in cases in which the Supreme Federal Court has denied extradition.

The court ruling, which allows Oviedo to move about freely in Brazil, did not please the Paraguayan government of Luis González Macchi, in which Jesús Argaña, the murdered vice-president’s son, serves as private secretary to the president.

Argaña accused the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court of refusing extradition due to “other kinds of interests” and “large amounts of money” that are involved – thus insinuating that bribes had played a role in the court decision, in statements published by the France Presse agency.

Oviedo is still hugely popular in his country, where he was not elected president four years ago only because the military justice system stood in his way by bringing a case against him for staging an aborted coup d’etat in 1996, when he was head of the armed forces.

The former general was sentenced to 10 years in prison at that time. However, he was successful in getting Raúl Cubas, a politician from his sector of the badly divided Colorado Party, elected president.

Cubas freed Oviedo from prison after taking office, before the former army chief had served even one year of the sentence.

But Cubas was unable to withstand the pressure in parliament amidst the political crisis unleashed by vice-president Argaña’s murder. Threatened with a ban from public life, he resigned and is now living in asylum in Brazil.

Oviedo, the main suspect in Argaña’s murder, fled to Argentina, where then-president Carlos Menem (1989-99) granted him asylum. But when President Fernando de la Rúa took office in December 1999, Oviedo went into hiding again and took refuge in Brazil.

The release of González Macchi’s main political rival and the possibility of his return to Paraguay has revived the political instability that has plagued that country since the overthrow of dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled the country of nearly six million with an iron fist from 1954 to 1989.

The threats to democracy in Paraguay have long caused concern among its partners in the Mercosur (Southern Common Market), Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

The political tension that frequently flares up in Asuncion led the Mercosur to adopt a “democratic clause”, which states that any country that abandons the rule of law is automatically expelled from the bloc.

Both Stroessner and Cubas were granted political asylum, and are living in Brazil. On Tuesday, Oviedo went to stay in a mansion near Stroessner’s residence in an opulent neighbourhood in Brasilia.

Brazil’s decisions to take in the Paraguayan leaders were founded on legal considerations that were based on the constitution, rather than on political motives. However, that has done nothing to mollify the Paraguayan government.

The Brazilian government has already played a strong role in Paraguay, through diplomatic pressure, during the various political crises experienced by that country.

Paraguay’s economic dependence on its giant neighbour, which is home to 170 million, stands in the way of bold action by Paraguayan authorities.

Expulsion from the Mercosur would spell disaster for Paraguay, although there is a strong current within the country demanding that it pull out of the customs union, on the argument that the Brazilian-led integration process is hurting Paraguay.

A large part of the land-locked Paraguay’s exports and imports pass through and over ports and highways in central and southern Brazil. In addition, the two countries share the enormous Itaipu hydroelectric dam, a source of essential revenues for Paraguay earned by selling energy to its huge partner.