Paraguay VP: I’ll shoot the president if he tries to run again

Well this is one way to get yourself dropped from the ticket in a hurry: Paraguay’s vice president [left] is urging his boss not to seek re-election in the most forceful way: He says he’ll personally shoot Fernando Lugo [center] down if he tries it. Paraguay’s leaders are limited to a single five-year term, so ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.
NORBERTO DUARTE/AFP/Getty Images
NORBERTO DUARTE/AFP/Getty Images
NORBERTO DUARTE/AFP/Getty Images

Well this is one way to get yourself dropped from the ticket in a hurry:

Well this is one way to get yourself dropped from the ticket in a hurry:

Paraguay’s vice president [left] is urging his boss not to seek re-election in the most forceful way: He says he’ll personally shoot Fernando Lugo [center] down if he tries it.

Paraguay’s leaders are limited to a single five-year term, so Lugo can’t run again unless the constitution is amended. Still, Lugo said earlier this week that he will consider a re-election bid if his supporters demand it.

Vice President Federico Franco says even trying to change the constitution will be political suicide for the president.

And in a play on his own last name, Franco said Friday that he’ll become Lugo’s "francotirador" — that’s Spanish for sniper — to stop the president from trying it.

Seems like a pretty tasteless joke considering Paraguay’s relatively recent experience with political assasination.

I went to see Robert Redford’s new movie The Conspirator last week — not a great movie but a fascinating and little-told story — and was struck by a throwaway line in the film suggesting that Vice President Andrew Johnson was worried about being considered a suspect in the Lincoln assassination. I don’t really know to what extent this was actually the case, but when you think about it, it’s surprising that you don’t seem more examples around the world of VPs engineering their bosses’ demise. 

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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