MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Paraguay businesses react to Cartes words: ‘first find the scoundrels and only then the claims’

“Making such accusations and even more in a foreign country, I don’t think it is the solution”, said Felippo

Paraguay’s Industrial Union, UIP, reacted strongly to President Horacio Cartes claims that the private sector was responsible for much that is wrong in government, and suggested an ‘intelligence work’ in the civil service to catch the ‘scoundrels and corrupt’.

Earlier in the week during a lunch meeting with Chileans business people in Santiago, Cartes blasted the business organizations in Paraguay claiming they are ‘only interested in making deals with the State’ and accused them of acting as accomplices and even responsible for much that the successive governments in the country had not delivered to the people.

“Although it sounds a bit presumptuous advising the President of the country, nevertheless I humbly suggest that Cartes should better organize an intelligence unit than act spontaneously out of his heart”, said UIP president Eduardo Felippo.

“Making such accusations and even more in a foreign country, I don’t think it is the solution”, added Felippo who insisted that the solution is an ‘intelligence unit work from the Finance ministry in the other ministries and government offices so as to determine where the scoundrels and corrupt are, bang their heads and send them to jail; later then let’s talk loudly and report the claims’ to the courts.

Felippo said that he did not feel personally included in the claims of President Cartes “because I believe he was referring to the pseudo-business people, those who don’t pay taxes and elude their fiscal and community responsibilities”.