The Asunción Municipal Council sent the collective agreement signed by Mayor Luis Bello and three municipal unions to its Legislation Committee. The vote determined only that the document would be referred to the committee; it did not approve the agreement. Fifteen councilors from the Colorado Party (ANR) voted to send it to the committee, while seven voted to return it to the mayor’s office.
The agreement provides benefits and salary improvements for employees. The opposition viewed the move as an electoral campaign to favor Camilo Pérez, the Colorado Party candidate for mayor. Bello signed the agreement one week before the municipal elections on October 4.
The motion to refer the agreement, proposed by councilor Mariano Cáceres, prevailed over a motion by Álvaro Grau of the Beloved Fatherland Party (PPQ), who wanted to return the text to the mayor’s office so the next administration could review and negotiate it. Grau, three fellow PPQ councilors and three councilors from the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA), including Humberto Blasco and Félix Ayala, voted to return it. Two PLRA councilors, Augusto Wagner and Fiorella Forestieri, were absent.
Workers from the SITRAMA and SIMUCA unions and the Union of Municipal Workers and Employees of Asunción (SINOEMA) attended Friday’s session and pressed for the agreement to be considered. On Thursday, after another session was canceled for lack of a quorum, employees occupied the city government’s Revenue Department and marched nearby. During the session, they booed Grau and cheered as Colorado Party councilors entered. Two earlier sessions had been canceled for lack of a quorum.
Blasco challenged the outgoing administration’s legitimacy to make commitments with budgetary effects and said councilors had not received the agreement before the session. The claim about prior access is Blasco’s. He called for legal and financial reviews and said the law limits the use of tax revenue for personal services; in his view, exceeding those limits could have legal consequences.
The councilor also said approval could make it harder for the next administration to govern and create “a climate of ungovernability from the outset.” He linked the rush to consider the agreement to what he described as the governing party’s distrust of the election results, and alleged that the text would protect employees whose continued employment the opposition disputes. These are Blasco’s allegations and have not been independently substantiated.
The debate comes as the municipality carries a court-contested debt of G. 36,088,962,697 to the Municipal Employees’ Retirement and Pension Fund (CJPPM), the pension institution for municipal workers. The amount includes G. 10,199,055,948 in principal, G. 22,626,364,205 in charges and G. 3,270,542,544 in legal fees. The fund said Asunción is up to date on regular employer and employee contribution payments. The historical debt forms part of a total liability of G. 52,945,172,300 owed to the institution by municipalities.