“I didn’t expect to witness something like this,” Hugo Velázquez, the speaker of the lower house, told reporters in explaining the decision to suspend the vote. But supporters of Mr. Cartes, whose conservative Colorado Party held a tight grip on power for six decades until 2008, saw an opening to change it. The protests in the capital, Asunción, rekindled concern over a return to instability, with some in Paraguay saying that the Senate’s vote amounted to a coup. News organizations in Paraguay reported that numerous protesters were injured in Asunción. Meanwhile, Mr. Cartes, 60, issued a statement on Friday night in which he blamed his opponents and the news media for the protests, saying they had “the objective of destroying democracy.”

Source: New York Times April 01, 2017 03:00 UTC