The president of the Social Security Institute (IPS), Isaías Ricardo Fretes, has been walking the hospital corridors talking to nurses, doctors, and patients, revealing the rot that unites politics, economic elite, banks, and bureaucracy. This machine of obstruction, driven by greed, is the mirror of systemic corruption in Paraguay.
If the establishment allows it and does not set a trap to force him to resign, Fretes may continue unveiling the workings of this gigantic machinery of business, neglect, and contempt for policyholders and retirees. But the question is whether President Santiago Peña will have the courage to dismantle this stew, letting go of the hands of so many whose businesses flourish in this scheme.
Last week, Cartist senators Erico Galeano and Hernán Rivas resigned from their seats, after the impossibility of protecting them. Judge Capurro, who would judge Rivas for an alleged fake law degree, also resigned for holding a doctorate from the same questioned university. Attorney General Emiliano Rolón had to disassociate himself from the same university. Without immunity, the Prosecutor's Office requested Galeano's arrest, who filed a preventive habeas corpus, but the Supreme Court denied it: “In case the competent court decrees preventive detention, there will be no illegal deprivation of liberty,” stated justices Ramírez Candia, Llanes, and Benítez Riera.
However, while the resignation was celebrated, the Magistrates Council, with an absolute majority of the ruling party, chose the questioned prosecutor Aldo Cantero to join the shortlist for judge, leaving aside the exemplary prosecutor Denis Yoon Pak, who fights drug trafficking. Cantero, known as “Aldo sings 50” in the González Daher era, received orders from Cartes' lawyer, according to published chats, and has complaints of domestic violence. Liberocartist senator Édgar López cynically admitted: “Many times, we have to support a candidate, even if he is not to our liking.”
The question remains: how far will politicians allow judges and prosecutors to investigate narcopolitics and the mafia of private universities? Erico and Rivas are sacrificed pieces so as not to put the system at risk. As the saying goes: “Muerto el perro no se acaba la rabia.”