Presidential elections are due in three months' time in the South American republic of Paraguay, but the candidate of the governing Colorado Party, Lino Oviedo, is being held prisoner at a military barracks in the capital, Asuncion. From there, the BBC's correspondent, Stephen Cviic, reports.

Stephen Cviic on politics in Paraguay (5'21")

It was a ferociously hot day in Asuncion, and as I stepped out of the air-conditioned hotel, I felt the shocking contrast of cold air on my back, and stuffy warmth in my face. It was that time of the afternoon when the city is just thinking about emerging from its siesta, and the streets were virtually empty as I walked two blocks to the office where I had my appointment. I went inside, blinking a little in the sudden darkness and saw a boy sitting at a reception desk. "Wait a second," he said, and disappeared into another room. As the door opened, I heard the sound of a radio - someone talking, news.

It was going to be an interesting interview, I thought, I'd come to see one of Paraguay's opposition politicians, a lawyer named Hermes Rafael Saguier, to ask him how he felt about the continuing crisis within the Colorado Party. Was it good news for the opposition, giving them their best chance yet of defeating the party which had ruled Paraguay for 50 years? Or was the Oviedo affair an annoying distraction, driving the opposition out of the headlines?

The boy gestured me into the inner office. Mr Saguier looked up distractedly. He was red in the face, and seemed hot and bothered. In fact, he appeared to be more interested in listening to his radio than in talking to me. Ah, one of those types I thought - a news junkie. I waited patiently for him to extract from the news whatever information it was he wanted. And then a thought struck me. "Is something happening?" I asked.

He grunted. "You shouldn't be here. All your colleagues are down at the barracks." And then with the air of one who has seen it all before, he added: "We are on the verge of a military coup." Two conflicting emotions jostled within me. Arranging interviews in hot countries where many people stop work at lunchtime is not easy. But if this really was a coup ...

Quickly I said: "Really I just wanted to ask you about the attitude of the opposition towards Mr Oviedo."

He sniffed. "You mean the opposition led by Domingo Laino?"

"Yes", I encouraged him, "Your party."

"Huh, they're absolutely useless." That decided me - interviewing an opposition politician who for some obscure factional reason didn't agree with his own leadership was going to be a waste of time. It was time to get down to the coup.

Outside I hailed a taxi: "The First Infantry Division," I said. And then in case I had got the name wrong, "wherever Oviedo is being held". We bumped along into the suburbs. "Do you know what's happening," I asked the driver.

"Oh, it's nothing", he said. "There was a bit of a fuss, but it's all over."

In fact, as we arrived at the barracks something did seem to be happening. For a start, there was a long line of soldiers outside the gates. And the Paraguayan press pack was out in force. At that moment, a figure in a suit and tie emerged from the compound. He was immediately swamped by microphones and tape recorders. Help, I thought, I haven't a clue what's going on. But there's a good solidarity among journalists, and I soon managed to piece together the bare bones of the story.

Apparently, the man I had just seen emerge from the barracks was a judge. Until a few hours earlier, he had been in charge of deciding whether or not to allow Lino Oviedo's release while investigations into his actions continued.

But just as the judge was setting out to speak to Mr Oviedo, one of the Courts of Appeal had suddenly removed him from the case. More disturbingly, some parts of Asuncion had indeed seen an unusual number of troops that afternoon, and warplanes had flown over the Supreme Court. The afternoon ended with judicial farce, but something much nastier had indeed been possible.

The Colorado Party and Paraguay as a whole have been split down the middle by Lino Oviedo. In April 1996, as army commander, he refused an order from the Paraguayan President, Juan Carlos Wasmosy, to resign, and instead, holed up in his barracks. Most observers described this as a military rebellion. After strong pressure from neighbouring Brazil and the United States, General Oviedo backed down. No one knows exactly what lay behind the whole affair, but it's not altogether surprising that neither the Paraguayan Government nor the outside world looked very favourably on Mr Oviedo's subsequent decision to seek the presidency. And yet - much to the dismay of the Colorado leadership, his personal popularity won him the nomination.

The issue has now descended into a legal fog, with the government and the armed forces - or so Mr Oviedo's supporters allege - trying every trick in the book to keep him in jail and out of May's elections.

It's hard to believe just how tortured Paraguayan politics is when you're out on the streets of Asuncion. This is basically a peaceful country, with a remarkable degree of integration between whites and indigenous Indians. Life moves along at a slow pace, far more slowly than in Brazil, where I spend most of my time.

I've always been suspicious of that old populist cliché about how awful politicians are, and how everything would be fine if countries were run by so-called ordinary people. And yet, in the case of Paraguay, the divorce between politics and daily life is so complete that I'm almost tempted to indulge in a bit of politician-bashing myself. We'll see over the next few months whether Paraguay's leaders have the wisdom to preserve the social peace which they seem to take for granted.
 

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