Paraguay’s political crisis deepens as Congress moves to impeach Peña
Paraguay’s Congress moved towards impeaching President Santiago Peña on Thursday after lawmakers from his ruling Colorado Party walked out of a joint session, preventing a vote on his resignation and leaving him in office.
Peña had submitted his resignation hours earlier amid the crisis surrounding Ueno Bank. The ruling party wanted Congress to accept it, while the opposition argued that he should remain in office to face impeachment proceedings approved by the Chamber of Deputies that same day. Opposition senators accused government lawmakers of deliberately breaking the quorum to avoid a vote rejecting the resignation.
With neither acceptance nor rejection of the resignation, Peña formally remains president. The Senate subsequently opened impeachment proceedings and summoned him to present his defence on Friday, a request he agreed to. At least 30 of the Senate’s 45 votes are required to remove him. The crisis follows the Central Bank’s intervention in Ueno Bank, which reportedly had solvency below half the legal minimum, freezing deposits belonging to around 2.9 million customers and between US$800 million and US$850 million in public funds.
This story is written and edited by the Global South World team, you can contact us here.
