Impeachment, the paraguayan constitution, and the impeachment of president Fernando Lugo

Abstract

The impeachment that took place in Paraguay on June 21st and 22nd, 2012, led to the removal from office of President Fernando Lugo. It was marked by its speed and swiftness and resulted in the suppression of the due process of law and the President’s right of defense because of his dismissal within only 24 hours. Consequently, the current debate is to determine if the impeachment was a real trial or proceeding, with the required protection of constitutional guarantees, or whether on the contrary, the impeachment was political and should not be covered with such guarantees, allowing the Senate to prosecute the President, establishing timeframes and procedures for each case, without rightly accrediting the accusations that were formulated. To resolve the question, this article analyzes the issue of impeachment as established in the Paraguayan Constitution and its antecedents, providing data of comparative law that regulates impeachment in Argentina, and the opinions of Paraguayan constitutional doctrine about the content, nature and scope of impeachment. Basic notions about political responsibility, and control mechanisms in parliamentary and presidential systems are established, highlighting their essential differences, used later to analyze in detail each of the phases of impeachment that ended with the removal of Fernando Lugo. This article also discusses the solutions against impeachment in the Paraguayan system, carefully analyzing the two decisions of unconstitutionality made by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court: one against the regulation that was issued ex profeso prosecute the president, in which he denounced violation of the prohibition of lex praevia, right to defense and due process of the law; and the other against the decision of the Senate that condemned him for malfeasance and removed him as Head of State and Head of Government, in which the same constitutional elements were invoked. Finally, the article concludes with reflections on the legal nature of impeachment and, in particular, on the constitutionality, validity and legitimacy of the impeachment of the President, concluding that it was not an impeachment in the true constitutional sense, and the political liberty could have been altered by the early removal of a democratically elected president, even though the process was evidently valid and legitimate, confirmed as such by the Supreme Court of Justice.