By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Jun 29 2004 (IPS)

(Latin America Desk) In proceedings similar to the return home of former Argentine president Juan Domingo Perón in 1973, former army chief Lino Oviedo returned Tuesday to Paraguay, and is now under arrest in a military prison awaiting a court review of the prison sentence and other charges he faces.

Oviedo’s return from exile in Brazil was explained in the context of ”the new political winds” sweeping Paraguay since President Nicanor Duarte took office in 2003.

Duarte purged the Supreme Court, which in 1998 upheld a 10-year sentence handed down to Oviedo, a popular former general, for a failed coup attempt in 1996 against the government of Juan Carlos Wasmosy (1994-1998).

The 61-year-old former general also faces charges for allegedly planning the Mar. 23, 1999 assassination of vice-president Luis María Argaña, and in connection with the deaths of eight demonstrators in protests held three days after Argaña was shot and killed.

The unrest led to the resignation of then-president Raúl Cubas (1998-1999), Oviedo’s ally, who had taken office the year before.

”The Duarte administration does not see Oviedo as an enemy, and we are confident in the new political climate in Paraguay,” former senator Víctor Galeano Perrone told IPS. Oviedo is seeking a retrial.

The former lawmaker, one of the leaders of Oviedo’s National Union of Ethical Citizens (UNACE) party, is also facing charges that he helped plan Argaña’s assassination. Five people are serving time for being the material authors of the murder.

Oviedo arrived at the Silvio Pettirossi international airport on a commercial flight from the southwestern Brazilian city of Foz do Iguacu on the border with Paraguay, where he has been living for the past few months having failed to convince Brasilia to grant him formal political asylum.

But Brazil also turned down an extradition request for Oviedo on the charges he is now facing.

Oviedo arrived in the company of lawmakers and leaders of UNACE and other parties opposed to the governing Colorado Party, as well as Brazilian and Argentine legislators, Paraguayan and foreign reporters, and friends and family members.

The return operation was similar in some aspects to that of General Perón in 1973, after 18 years in Spain – an exile that began in Paraguay, said Galeano Perrone. But he underlined one important difference: Perón was three times president of Argentina, and Oviedo merely a presidential hopeful.

”The only ones missing were a few Uruguayan representatives, but that was due to the fact that internal party elections were held here Sunday,” said the Paraguayan politician.

Although he did not give names, it was reported to the press that one of those who had planned to accompany Oviedo was Senator Pablo Millor of Uruguay’s conservative governing Colorado Party.

The presence of lawmakers from two of Paraguay’s three partners in the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc – also made up of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay – did not surprise observers, because when he first fled the country five years ago, Oviedo went to Argentina and then Brazil.

He left Argentina in December 1999, a few hours after then-president Carlos Menem – who had granted him refuge – ended his second five-year presidential term.

Uruguay has also served as refuge for several of Oviedo’s political associates, like Galeano Perrone, his brother Carlos Galeano Perrone, former defence minister José Felicísimo Segovia and Conrado Papalardo – the latter two served in the Cubas administration, who also fled to Brazil.

As a result of failed coups and other upsets that Paraguay’s democracy endured in the 1990s, the four partners in Mercosur signed a democracy clause, according to which any interruption of the constitutional order in any of the member countries would automatically lead to expulsion from the bloc.

Like Oviedo Tuesday and Segovia in the past, Galeano Perrone told IPS that he would return to clarify his situation in the courts in Paraguay, which he fled to avoid ”brutal persecution” by the government headed by Luis González Macchi (1999-2003) against UNACE legislators.

”The accusations against Oviedo and against me” in connection with Argaña’s death ”are absurd” because the only one hurt by the assassination was ”our sector”, he said, in line with what Oviedo said in an e-mail interview granted to IPS while still in Brazil, and published on Jun. 9.

”It is essential to seek the truth,” a search that ”can never be considered an orchestrated plan,” said the former general, in response to those who say he is behind calls for a reopening of the investigation into Argaña’s March 1999 murder.

According to new testimony reported by the Brazilian magazine Istoé, Argaña was not killed when gunmen opened fire on his car, as the official autopsy and investigation found, but was supposedly already dead when the car was intercepted, after dying of a heart attack in his mistress’s apartment.

As soon as Oviedo set foot on Paraguayan soil Tuesday, he was taken by helicopter to a military prison, and at the hour that a special UNACE convention scheduled several days ago – a move that put the Colorado Party government on alert.

The strict security measures set up by police and the armed forces kept the hundreds of supporters who wanted to greet Oviedo a few kilometres from the airport terminal. The crowd was around the same size as the one that saw him off from Foz do Iguacu, in Brazil.

Galeano Perrone said the UNACE leader’s legal defence team will immediately file a request for a review of the 10-year prison sentence handed down for Oviedo’s role in the attempted coup against the government of Juan Carlos Wasmosy (1994-1998), his main political rival. It is that conviction which has him behind bars in Viñas Cué, 15 km north of Asunción.

Tuesday afternoon, Oviedo made his statement to civilian justice officials who questioned him about his alleged participation in the attempted military coup d’état in May 2000 against González Macchi, a case in which nearly all other suspects were let off..

Meanwhile, on the streets of Asunción, the only thing out of the ordinary was the massive police presence.

Now ”we trust in Paraguay’s new situation, with a renewed Supreme Court, having replaced six of the nine members who upheld the ruling against Oviedo, and a democratically elected government that does not see a UNACE leader as the enemy,” said Galeano Perrone, explaining why the former general chose now to return.

The ruling upheld by the Court had been issued by a military tribunal after civilian courts had dismissed it twice, he said.

But the military courts only have the authority to act in situations of war or international conflict, meaning that its decision has no validity at all, as local and international jurists have verified, said the former senator.

”The day that Oviedo says he no longer hopes to be president is the day he will no longer be persecuted by a segment of the Colorado Party (of which UNACE is a faction) linked to former dictator Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989).”

”But that day has not yet come,” he said.

Excerpt: