mítines relámpagos! history continues to repeat...

Paraguay, unlike other countries facing political reform, is on the verge of altering the head of the governing body, for the first time in nearly twenty years –the longest a single political party has been instated. After Paraguay’s initial shift to presidential democratic rule (1989), there has been a seemingly everlasting stint of the Colorado party and its occupancy of the administrative governing body. But many are unaware of the Colorado party’s origins and ties with authoritarian leaders prior to the countries democratic shift. At one point in the party’s ruling history (1942-1967), the nation was declared a single-party state and no effort of opposition seemed to be exemplified –socially or politically. It wasn’t until the 1980’s where a politically driven opposition surfaced, known as PLRA, or, Authentic Radical Liberal Party. Directed by a man named Domingo Laino, the newly formed party was a focal point in thwarting the obvious lingering occupancy of the Colorado party, primarily during the last half of the eighties. But despite efforts for reform, the Colorado party’s flexed grip on the national media and governmental agencies allowed for an obviously tampered result of victory, during the free elections of 1989 –also the year of the countries reallocation to presidential democracy.

It seems as if even after the installation of western influenced political form, a predominant party can always, with no regard, regulate and determine policy along with social standards on a basis of partisan desire. But even now with underlying ‘liberation politics’ in effect, it seems as if the same efforts exemplified in the tail end of the 1980’s are existent presently within anti-Colorado effort –and in order to avoid pseudo-reform similar to the countries past, the ousted party and its influences, must be ultimately silenced.

It will take a newly elected political administration to ultimately earn the trust of its voting public and shift Paraguay away from a some what corrupt era of thought to be functioning democracy, and furthermore into an era of unbiased and untainted political and social relationship.