Paraguayan ruling party supports Cartes after accusation of planning Pecci’s death

Asunción, Oct 7 (EFE).- The ruling Colorado Party of Paraguay expressed this Saturday its support for the former ruler of that country Horacio Cartes (2013-2018), and leader of this political movement, after being accused in a hearing in Colombia of planning the crime of prosecutor Marcelo Pecci.

Cartes was accused this Friday by Francisco Luis Correa, investigated for allegedly articulating the murder of Pecci in May last year, a statement that the Paraguayan political leader called “unfounded.”

“Members of the National Council of Conventionals of the National Republican Association (ANR) (or Colorado Party) gathered together and express their total support for the president, Mr. Horacio Cartes Jara, in the face of the new wave of attacks promoted by sectors traitors to the party and the media” reads a statement released by the ruling party.

Likewise, members of the party asked the Paraguayan president, Santiago Peña, “to use his powers to defend the person responsible for his victory in the last general elections” on April 30.

Likewise, pro-government senators and deputies in the Paraguayan Congress issued a statement in which they point out that Cartes is “a victim of false accusations that seek to damage his image.”

“We renew our confidence in the leader of the Honor Colorado movement and president of the National Republican Association, Horacio Cartes,” reads the note from the bench loyal to the former president.

For its part, the opposition Partido Patria Querida (PPQ) spoke out about the “treacherous assassination of Marcelo Pecci” and asked the Public Ministry for a “serious, responsible and credible investigation to determine the real truth” of the case.

“PPQ joins the majority voices of citizens who long for the unrestricted validity of the rule of law, and especially stands in solidarity with the family of Dr. Pecci, who continues to suffer not only the painful hours of the death of the ill-fated tax agent, but until now it is not known with irrefutable clarity who were the moral authors in Paraguay of this terrible crime,” the party highlighted in a statement.

At the hearing this Friday, Luis Correa accused Cartes of planning Pecci’s death along with the alleged drug trafficker Miguel Ángel Insfrán, alias “Tío Rico”, who is detained by the Paraguayan authorities after being captured last February in Brazil within an operation against organized crime.

Pecci, one of the most important anti-mafia prosecutors in Paraguay, was murdered in May 2022 by hitmen who were traveling on a jet ski when he was on a hotel beach on the island of Barú, near Cartagena de Indias, celebrating his honeymoon with his wife, the Paraguayan journalist Claudia Aguilera.

The Colombian authorities have arrested a total of seven people suspected of being involved in the murder of the prosecutor, a crime with which investigators believe the First Capital Command (PCC) may be related, a gang born in the prisons of Brazil and which today has tentacles in almost the entire region. There have also been captures in Venezuela and El Salvador. EFE

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