PRESIDENT (AND EX-BISHOP) LUGO FATHERS A CHILD

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ASUNCION 000229 SIPDIS STATE FOR WHA/BSC MDASCHBACH E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/31/2034 TAGS: PGOV PHUM PINR PA SUBJECT: PRESIDENT (AND EX-BISHOP) LUGO FATHERS A CHILD REF: 08 ASUNCION 00538 Classified By: DCM Michael J. Fitzpatrick for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (U) Paraguay's bishop-turned-President is indeed a Father -- in more ways than one. President Fernando Lugo acknowledged during a brief April 13 press conference that he had had a romantic relationship with Viviana Rosalith Carrillo Canete while serving as bishop of San Pedro Department. He admitted having fathered her child, Guillermo Armindo Carrillo Canete, and accepted full responsibility stemming from such a relationship. He stated that given the privacy interests of the child "and the high responsibility bestowed on me as president" he would make no further declarations on the subject. (BIO NOTE: President Lugo will turn 58 on May 30. Viviana Carrillo was born December 8, 1982; her son was born May 4, 2007 -- but his birth was reportedly not registered until days after Lugo won the April 20, 2008 presidential election. END NOTE.) ¶2. (U) The issue of Lugo's possibly having had children first surfaced in 2006-7, during the presidential campaign. Lugo's Colorado Party opponents circulated rumors far and wide that Lugo had a child -- or as many as 17 children, depending on the version of the rumor. But no one put a name or a face on it until last Wednesday, on the eve of Easter celebrations. Private lawyers announced April 8 that Viviana Carrillo, who lived in Chore, San Pedro at the time of her son's conception, had filed a complaint with Paraguayan prosecutors claiming that Lugo had fathered Guillermo Carrillo in 2006; the lawyers demanded that Lugo submit to a paternity test. Almost immediately, however, the waters were muddied when Viviana Carrillo herself denied having ever filed such a complaint (though not denying that she had a son with Lugo). ¶3. (C) Lugo let it be know he would avoid comment over the four-day Holy Week break -- even as that just fed the swirling media frenzy of allegations and speculation. Questions were asked about why this is coming out now, in the midst of political turmoil within the government ranks and continued rumors of coup plotting by government opponents. There were charges that Carrillo had been pressured to sign the complaint -- or that the signature had been forged; that the private lawyers involved had done work in the past (perhaps not so coincidentally) for Lugo's predecessor as President, the Colorado Nicanor Duarte Frutos; and even that the lawyers had sought a one million dollar bribe not to pursue the legal complaint against President Lugo. His own advisers were unclear as what to say -- or what to advise the President to do. The truthfulness, or the lack of truthfulness, of the central accusation of fatherhood seemed almost beside the point, lost in the jockeying for political advantage. ¶4. (C) With his three-minute statement to the press April 13, however, Lugo swept all the politics aside, if not over a cliff. Children's and Adolescents' Minister Liz Torres told the press that she welcomed the president's announcement as an impetus to change the "culture of lies" created by parents' failure to take responsibility for their progeny. She and others have suggested that this is entirely the type of transparency and acceptance of responsibility that is otherwise in short supply here. ¶5. (C) COMMENT: The news that Lugo fathered a child while serving as a bishop could dim some of his luster in the eyes of some supporters, particularly the most fervent of followers here who elected him as an agent of change. But most Paraguayans readily accept the reality that their local priest -- particularly in rural areas, such as San Pedro, where Lugo long-served -- is indeed a father in multiple ways. And the two-year run of the rumor that Lugo himself had a love child has only further taken the sting out of issue. Lugo himself has now rendered it a non-story by openly accepting responsibility for the child. The disclosure could complicate Lugo's relationship with the Vatican, which granted him a disposition from his clerical duties to serve as president in July 2008 (reftel) -- though we of course don't know what the good father may have confessed to the Vatican long ago. But the long-term impact of this scandal on the Paraguayan people should be minimal given that Lugo's behavior is entirely consistent with cultural norms. Which is not to say that his political opponents won't keep trying. END COMMENT. Please visit us at http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/asuncion ASUNCION 00000229 002 OF 002 AYALDE