Hundreds of vehicles congregate in Asunción against corruption and reform

Asunción, Jun 22 (efe-epa).- Hundreds of vehicles gathered Monday in Asunción, after meeting at various points in the city, to participate for about an hour in a demonstration against corruption and the state reform President Mario Abdo Benítez intends to undertake.

The protesters extended, without getting out of their cars, along the two lanes of the Costanera, the river walk that borders the Paraguay river, although without coming completely close to the Government Palace, with the road cut first by a police barrier and, a few meters later, by another military unit.

The occupants of the congregated vehicles waved Paraguayan flags, sang the national anthem and kept honking their horns to show their rejection of the government’s plans, which during the coronavirus pandemic announced a reform of the State to try to correct some flaws.

For those attending the call, this appointment was a demonstration of the satiety of the citizenry with the Government, and specifically with President Abdo Benítez and with the Minister of Finance, Benigno López, who appeared in banners and cartoons in which he was represented as a virus.

In this way, they intended to express their discontent with the government’s management of the pandemic, which opposition voices accuse of indebting the people with the request for a loan of 1.6 billion euros to deal with the coronavirus.

The opposition also did not forgive Abdo Benítez, and he was remembered again in this march, following the secret act signed with Brazil on the purchase of energy from the Itaipú dam, which was about to cost him the position in 2019, when he was barely a year into the Presidency.

The call, supported by unions and by the left-wing opposition Guasú Front formation, demanded that the Executive put itself at the service of the workers, as claimed by some of the union representatives who spoke from one of the vehicles.

The event also coincided with the eighth anniversary of the impeachment that took the then Paraguayan president, Fernando Lugo (2008-2012), from the Guasú Front, with whom a different political formation had been installed for the first time in the Government of the country. to the Colorado Party.

In addition to Asunción, where protesters went from different parts of the city to the Costanera, in the center, protests were called in 14 other locations in Paraguay. EFE-EPA

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