Paraguay's lower house voted 78-0 to impeach President Santiago Peña minutes after he announced his resignation Thursday, as citizens who lost their savings to a collapsed digital bank tied to the president refused to let him walk away clean — a standard of accountability Washington wouldn't recognize.
The stakes are plain: millions of Paraguayans woke up to frozen bank accounts, lost pensions, and unpaid wages after Ueno Bank was seized mid-solvency crisis. The Central Bank found Ueno's solvency ratio had fallen below 50% of the required minimum. The bank held 2.9 million customers in a country of 6.1 million people. Government funds — including worker pensions managed by the Social Security Institute — had been poured into the institution under Peña's watch.
Peña announced his resignation in a video posted to X, saying he stepped down for "the stability of our country, social peace and the need to preserve our democratic institutions." He apologized "if I have failed them at any point" — but stopped short of accepting responsibility for the crisis.
Lawmakers weren't buying it. The 78-0 vote included every member of Peña's own long-ruling Colorado Party. The charges accuse Peña of "serious and systematic dereliction of duty" and now head to the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required to convict and formally remove him from office.
The Boston Herald framed the story around the decisive impeachment vote and the popular fury driving it, noting the Colorado Party's "uncomfortable proximity" to regulators and business elites. CNN led with the resignation itself and buried the unanimous impeachment vote deeper in its report, giving more weight to Peña's words than to the institutional repudiation that followed.
Here's what matters: Peña held a stake in Ueno's holding company until last year, according to the Herald. Under his presidency, government money flooded the bank's coffers. He appointed allies to key positions. The bank exploded from obscurity to a household name in under five years, plastering its name on stadiums and sponsoring the national soccer team while its lending practices drew repeated warnings. Nobody in power asked questions until the people forced them to.
Protesters marched on Congress for three straight days. "Santiago Peña and the Colorado Party have stolen all our savings," Luis Pineda told the Herald. "We are fed up with 70 years of plunder."
Vice President Pedro Alliana is expected to be sworn in to serve out Peña's term through August 2028.
The open question isn't what happens in Asunción. It's why Americans accept less. When our officials cash out after failures that cost citizens everything, they don't face impeachment votes or street protests — they walk into seven-figure lobbying contracts. The Paraguayans demanded their lawmakers act, and the lawmakers acted. What's our excuse?
