Lino Oviedo Dies in Crash With Two Others on Saturday

Authorities said Sunday that Paraguayan presidential hopeful Lino Cesar Oviedo died in a helicopter crash on Saturday night while returning from a political rally in northern Paraguay.

All three aboard the helicopter, including the pilot, were killed in the crash, said Johnny Villalba, a spokesman for Paraguay’s airport authority.

Lino Oviedo, 69, was running in April’s elections as leader of Paraguay’s third-largest opposition party, the National Union of Ethical Citizens.

Oviedo was born in poverty in the town of Juan de Mena (Cordillera Department) on September 23, 1943. He chose a military career, studied in Germany and eventually became a close aide to General Andrés Rodríguez. He was named chief of the Army in 1993. When President Juan Carlos Wasmosy asked him to step down from that position in April 1996, he allegedly refused and threatened a coup d’etat. After days of tension, Wasmosy offered him the Defence Ministry instead, but when Oviedo went to the presidential palace to take the oath, dressed in civilian clothes, the President, backed by popular demonstrations, withdrew the offer.

Ousted from the military, he concentrated in winning the ruling Colorado Party’s candidacy for the 1998 presidential elections, and succeeded by presenting a populist platform through his great rhetorical skills. A month before the national elections, and while leading the polls, he was finally condemned to a ten-year prison term for his 1996’s military mutiny. His running mate Raúl Cubas continued the campaign and eventually won the elections, largely based on the promise to free Oviedo, which in fact he did days after taking office, over the protest of the Paraguayan Supreme Court and opposition leaders.

In March 1999, vice president Luis María Argaña, a key political enemy of both Oviedo and president Cubas, was assassinated. In mid of riots and political turmoil, Cubas resigned, abandoning Oviedo, who fled into exile, first in Argentina and then in Brazil.

On June 28, 2004, he returned to Paraguay and was detained by the police, who took him to the Military Prison of Viñas Cué, located a short distance from Asunción. Initially sentenced to a ten-year term, he was released on parole for good behaviour on 6 September 2007.