2023-04-30 05:01:00
Page/12 in Paraguay
From Asunción
Paraguay defines this Sunday the future of its next five years of political life. The president elected by an electorate of 4,782,940 voters will remain in government until 2028 even if he wins by one vote. The 1992 constitution does not contemplate the ballotage. Santiago Peña, the candidate of the Colorado Party, will try to maintain the hegemony of almost seven decades, only interrupted by the mandate of Bishop Fernando Lugo in 2008, when he won and four years later, he was removed by a soft coup by Congress.
Efraín Alegre, a lawyer who was Lugo’s minister, heads the Concertación –an alliance of fourteen parties– and according to various surveys, is the leader who could end the string of victories for the National Republican Association (ANR) for the second time. , the formal name of the ruling party. The electoral campaign has been generally calm and respectfulbeyond the diatribes of the third contender in contention for the head of state, Paraguayan Advice Cubas, a mixture of Bolsonaro and Milei with Guarani imprint.
Coloradism, omnipresent
The election will also define 17 governors in all departments, 45 senators and 80 deputies. In both chambers, Coloradism has a majority and even if it loses the fight to occupy the López Palace, it could condition what an opposition president does in the future.
The days before the elections only raised the ambient temperature, when former President Horacio Cartes appeared on the scene –or was exposed in public– an omnipresent figure inside and outside the highest national political force. The strongest evidence was the definition that Alegre dedicated to it in a closing ceremony in Capiatá: “We will defeat the Paraguayan Pablo Escobar and his Chili”he said of the billionaire businessman sanctioned by the United States government, whose political godson is Peña. He referred to by the nickname Chili to the character who served as the narco’s errand boy in the Colombian fiction series.
Is the third time will be the charm?
The elections will take place from 7 in the morning and as a rule – a hotel letterhead notified this envoy of the provisions to be met – the sale of alcohol will be prohibited until 18, two hours after the closing of the tables . The expectation aroused by the candidacy of Alegre –former Minister of Public Works of Lugo– suggests that his victory could be his third consecutive run for president. In 2013 he garnered 37.11 percent of the votes and in 2018, when he was defeated by the current president Mario Abdo Benítez, 43.04. His numbers, this time, should be at the level of an election where Cubas is the revulsion that could win votes from the two main candidates, exploiting the feeling of anger that exists against the ruling class in general.
The choice is also a matter not less to take into account. The so-called unblocked lists, where the candidates for any of the positions are not integrated into the controversial sheet lists. This modality would have a decisive weight in the vote for legislators of both chambers.
The Guasú Front, the political force that had led Lugo to the presidency, is divided in support of two candidates. The majority of this expression, where right-wing parties, the center-left and the Communist Party coexist, supports Alegre’s presidential aspiration. Among his references are his former vice candidate in 2018, Leo Rubin and the former Minister of Health, Esperanza Martínez, during the government of the Catholic bishop. On the other hand, the senator of the Front, Jorge Querey, supports the fourth candidate expected to vote, the former minister and chancellor from Colorado, Euclides Cardozo.
The Thorny Backing of Cartes
Peña’s candidacy arose from an internship in the Colorado Party where he defeated former evangelical bishop Arnoldo Wiens, who had the support of current President Benítez. With the support of Cartes, the former president who governed between 2013 and 2018, his former finance minister will try to keep the main right-wing force in power. A fact that speaks of the political familiarity of the candidates for president is that PEña was a member of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA) for 21 years, to which Alegre belongs, until she joined Colorado. He said in an interview a couple of months ago that his new strength “is a feeling” to justify the change of political color.
Under the watchful eye of the powers that are interested in Paraguay –and not so much in the focus of attention that the election aroused in South America–, the vote will not substantially modify the country’s well-known inequality –despite the fact that it improved some places in the Gini index–, nor the serious problems due to the growing presence of drug trafficking, insecurity and smuggling. Perhaps too stigmatized, crossed by two wars of extermination in two consecutive centuries –that of the Triple Alliance and that of the Chaco against Bolivia– this nation of almost 7.5 million inhabitants has a new opportunity to prove that it is in the right direction. same direction as other Latin American governments. Integrated into a current that, with advances and setbacks, tries to break away from the dominant economic matrix of neoliberalism.
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