Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

PARAGUAY: Four Supreme Court Justices Face Impeachment

Alejandro Sciscioli

ASUNCION, Nov 3 2003 (IPS) - The first step was taken Monday towards the start of impeachment trials in parliament for four of the nine members of Paraguay’s corruption-tainted Supreme Court.

Justices Carlos Fernández Gadea, Luis Lezcano, Felipe Santiago, and Supreme Court president Bonifacio Ríos Avalos will be submitted to a political trial, as agreed 10 days ago by President Nicanor Duarte and parliamentary opposition leaders.

Two other magistrates, Jerónimo Irala and Raúl Sapena, handed in their resignations on Oct. 27 to avoid impeachment.

The accusation against the four justices, which was presented in the lower house of parliament Monday, states that the Supreme Court ”has violated the constitution and the nation’s laws, violated the principle of the separation and balance of powers, abused its power by exercising it in an arbitrary manner that runs counter to the legal order, and damaged the state of law and weakened the country’s democratic institutions.”

The four magistrates are facing some 20 separate charges, and are to be investigated by the public prosecutor’s office.

Among the offences of which the judges are charged are the usurping of constitutional powers reserved for the legislature, perversion of the course of justice, criminal association, extortion, money laundering, forgery of false public documents, trafficking of influences, and illicit enrichment.

”In the past two years, the Supreme Court’s image has sharply deteriorated due to a string of scandals in which the magistrates have been implicated,” analyst Rodney Smidbauer, a lawyer and journalist, told IPS.

After Argaña’s assassination in March 1999 and the mass protests that led to the resignation of then-president Raúl Cubas, the Court ruled in April 1999 that then-president of Congress Luis González Macchi was to complete Cubas’ term, which ended in August 2003.

But a number of jurists said the constitution clearly stipulates that early elections must be held when the country is left with neither president nor vice-president.

The local newspaper ABC Color reported that members of the Supreme Court are also accused of taking possession in June 2002 of an airplane that had been seized in an operation against a drug trafficking band. An attorney-general’s office report said the Court’s attempt to take control of the plane was illegal.

The Court reportedly used more than 600,000 dollars from its budget to repair the plane. But after the scandal broke out, the aircraft was put under the custody of the judge in the first instance court that ruled on the case.

In addition, a group of construction firms filed charges in the Court of the Exchequer early last year, accusing the Supreme Court of fraud in the tendering process for the construction of a wing of the new Palace of Justice in Asuncion.

The lawsuit was later withdrawn, with no explanation by any of the concerned parties, and the Court put out a new call for bids.

In a controversial ruling, the Supreme Court justices declared themselves ”unremovable” in May 2000, a decision that according to legal experts ran counter to the constitution.

And last February, in the first plenary session after January’s judicial recess, the members of the Court adopted a resolution in which they granted themselves a monthly bonus of nearly 800 dollars.

”On the other hand, there are blocs or circles of power in the Court, with magistrates who sponsor teams of lawyers to achieve important legal rulings in ‘big’ civil and penal cases’,” said Smidbauer.

”I don’t believe a political agreement is needed to impeach them, since according to the documents and evidence presented and the witnesses that will testify for the prosecution, the facts suffice to remove the magistrates,” said the legal analyst.

The next step in the process will take place on Wednesday, when the Chamber of Deputies plans to hold a special session to officially receive the petition, which will then go to the Commission on Constitutional Affairs.

The Commission’s decision will be submitted to a plenary session of the lower house of Congress, where a two-thirds majority is needed in order for the impeachment trials to go ahead.

”In this case, the Chamber of Deputies becomes the accusing party. Once the petition is approved, the process goes to the Senate, where the political trial will be held,” said Deputy Rafael Filizzola, the leader of the social democratic País Solidario party in the lower house.

It has not yet been decided in which order the four magistrates are to be tried. Sources in parliament told IPS that a decision may be reached by lottery.

Wildo Rienzi, Víctor Núñez and Antonio Fretes, the last three justices to be appointed to the Supreme Court, will not be tried, thanks to the political agreement between President Duarte and the opposition.

Duarte, who took office in mid-August after being elected on an anti-corruption platform, will meet again this week with the opposition leaders and lawmakers from the ruling Colorado Party to reach agreement on the terms of the impeachment trials.

Herminio Cáceres, the president of the Colorado Party – which has been in power in this Southern Cone country since 1954 – said Duarte’s aim is to ”unify the disparate stances on this question held by the various political sectors.”

According to the Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, Paraguay is the fourth-most corrupt country in the world, only ahead of Haiti, Nigeria and Bangladesh.

It ranked 130th out of 133 countries included on this year’s ”corruption perceptions index”, which defines corruption as ”the abuse of public office for private gain,” and measures ”the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among a country’s public officials and politicians.”

Out of a possible high score of 10, Paraguay was assigned just 1.6 points, down from last year’s 1.7.