Paraguay's Senate removed President Santiago Peña from office in a unanimous vote, AP reported, in a copy on PBS NewsHour. Before the vote it had refused the 72-hour extension he asked for to prepare his defence, MercoPress said. MercoPress put the tally at 44 of 45 senators present, but the Rio Times says the Senate published no number, so we treat that figure as unconfirmed.
The Senate removed him for poor performance of his duties, a ground for impeachment under Article 225 of the constitution, the Rio Times reported. Prosecutors on Friday ordered the arrest of Peña and former Central Bank chief Carlos Carvallo. Peña has denied wrongdoing. Vice President Pedro Alliana was sworn in before Congress that night.
The removal followed the collapse of Ueno Bank. Regulators intervened and froze the accounts of nearly 3 million customers, and the Central Bank took the bank over for insolvency and irregular loans to companies owned by its owners. By the Central Bank's count, 1.2 million customers had received partial or full reimbursement of their deposits.
Machiavelli's test
Machiavelli posed the question in his Discourses on Livy. A republic needs a lawful channel for grievances against its leaders, and he drew a hard line between that channel and its counterfeit. In the Ninian Hill Thomson translation: "But as the right to accuse is beneficial in a republic, so calumny, on the other hand, is useless and hurtful." Accusation earns its keep when it runs through public authority and public ordinances. Calumny runs through faction.
Paraguay meets half of that test and strains the other half. The charge was public and constitutional, brought under a named article, and AP reports a unanimous vote among the senators present. But a chamber that votes as one is not proof of fairness, and the Senate published no tally to check.
The refusal of 72 hours is where the test bites. Peña asked for time to prepare his defence and was refused. Our reading: Machiavelli's accusation needs a real chance to answer, and three days was a small price for it. None of our sources quotes a defender calling the removal a scapegoating, so we do not put that word in anyone's mouth; the doubt is ours.
The test measures process, not guilt. Whether Peña bears responsibility for Ueno's failure is a question the Senate's vote does not answer, and we have seen no ruling reported that tests the prosecutors' allegations. The same discipline applies to the Indonesian officers named as suspects this month, where guilt is equally unproven, and to our Leader on haste in war powers.
Watch for: whether a judge, not only prosecutors, examines the case against Peña and Carvallo, and whether the Senate ever publishes its tally.
Cover image: Palacio Legislativo, Asunción (file photo, 2017), Mx. Granger, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.