Paraguay's Congress clears controversial 'privatization' law.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
Two months after assuming the Paraguayan presidency, businessman Horacio Cartes has convinced Congress to approve a law giving the government authority to rent out--for a period of up to 40 years and without legislative or judicial oversight--a vast array of state assets and services.
Officially named the Ley de Promocion de la Inversion en Infraestructura, the norm is more commonly referred to as the Ley de Participacion Publica-Privada, or PPP. Among other things, it allows the executive to offer leases on Paraguay's two massive binational hydroelectric plants: Itaipu, which it shares with Brazil, and Yacyreta, which it shares with Argentina.
President Cartes and the governing Asociacion Nacional Republicana (ANR), better known as the Partido Colorado (PC), say the PPP will jumpstart the economy, generate jobs, and allow the country to end its chronic budget-deficit problems. The opposition Frente Guasu (FG), a coalition of political parties and social movements led by ex-President Fernando Lugo (2008-2012), dismisses the law as unconstitutional and calls it "a covert effort to privatize all the state's assets," and said it amounts to "the surrender of national sovereignty during the next four decades."
The bill, which received final congressional approval on Oct. 28, is the second in a pair of provisions that Cartes, almost immediately upon taking office, cited as keys for "putting the country in order and creating a good government." Congress satisfied the first of the president's goals on Aug. 22 when it passed a bill giving the armed forces extraordinary powers to intervene in domestic affairs (NotiSur, Sept. 6, 2013). "Militarization and privatization go hand in hand in the businessman-president's strategy," Sen. Esperanza Martinez (FG) told Radio Cardinal.
Cartes and his PC backers did not include the PPP in the platform they presented to the Paraguayan people in the lead-up to last April's elections. Nor was the law publicly debated. Only one special committee made up of PC leaders was allowed to preview the text, which was drafted by a group of presidential advisors and then fast-tracked through the legislature.
The Camara de Diputados approved the bill in late August, just two weeks after the new government was sworn in. A month later, on Sept. 27, the PPP went to a vote in the Senate. At the president's behest, the Senate added a number of modifications, sending the text back to the lower house, where the PC--which enjoys a...
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