2023-05-01 16:53:33
The lawyer and political analyst, Camilo Filartigacommented on the reasons why the Colorado party held power for so many years in Paraguay. “The idea of borrowed power is installed, that’s why Peña must resolve it by building autonomy in his government,” assured in Modo Fontevecchiaby Net TV and Radio Perfil (FM 101.9).
In this world where political parties are fermenting and losing their specific weight, the case of the Colorado Party in Paraguay draws attention. How did you maintain this level of hegemony throughout these 70 years?
The case of party system in Paraguaymade up of two traditional parties from the late 19th century, the Colorado and the Authentic Liberal-Radical, are cases that draw attention in political science at the international level.
Both parties have territorial structures and a presence, especially at the national level, very much in force at the different levels of government. Since 1947 the Colorado Party exercised the Executive Powerwith only a parenthesis between 2008 and 2013, where the Patriotic Alliance for Change led by Fernando Lugo.
The results of the Elections in Paraguay: the official Santiago Peña won by more than 15 points over Efraín Alegre
It is an electoral machine set up and deployed that operates with tremendous effectiveness. On the one hand, that dimension with the structures with the sectional ones, which are the territorial party organ. Even in many places far from the capital, they operate to solve people’s daily problems, which many times not even the local government responds to.
It is a sum of cultural, identity and political elements, that makes the Colorado Party have so much prominence in Paraguay. He is always competitive and hard to beat.
And we must also add the strong link with public officials, where the majority is affiliated with that party and operates, in the elections, according to that affiliation.
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Another element that surprises from a distance is the relationship with Alfredo Stroessner, a military dictator who was from the Colorado Party and who ruled your country for decades. And to this day it continues to generate controversy. How does Paraguayan society digest the dictatorship of those years?
It is a conservative society. Any speech favorable to what Stroessner was does not pay a high price in public opinion. This explains why, from time to time, various political leaders, especially from that party, refer with a certain nostalgia to that totalitarian past. Partly because that allows them to reinforce those identity ties within the party.
So, there is a very special dichotomy in Paraguay: the transition to democracy was carried out by the same party that sustained the dictatorship for 35 long years.
Remembering the constitutional reform of 1992, the Colorado Party was the coordinator of all this constituent process. Our history of democratization is crossed by the exclusive leadership of the same party that sustained the dictatorship.
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Even with that hegemony, it failed to get more than 50%, then the other more traditional party got 27%, but there is a third party, the National Crusade Party led by Paraguayan Cubas. Is he an anti-political candidate, like Javier Milei in our country or Jai Bolsonaro in Brazil at the time? Is it correct that he had physical assaults against his opponents, such as defecating in a judge’s study?
We are still trying to understand their results, because Few imagined the electoral performance that it would have. Beyond that it measured well and was attractive to an entire sector fed up with traditional politics.
He obtained almost 700,000 votes, leaving 80,000 votes behind. Ephraim Alegre, which brings together all the opposition parties. It is a phenomenon that marked a new stage in Paraguayan politics and we must begin to study the implications that it may have.
He is a Colorado affiliate, he was a deputy in the nineties for National Encounter, that is to say that he has had a leading role in the fight against Stroessnismo as a university leader.
For Milei, Kirchnerism already sees him as “the rival” to beat
It is not an impromptu presents himself as a romantic anarchist. But his speeches are contradictory, he mixes fascist and totalitarian ideas. He is an anti-establishment who kicked the table and concentrated an important part of a sector of the electorate.
Claudio Mardones (CM): There is a topic of debate regarding the complaints against the former president, Horacio Cartes, promoted by the United States Department of State. In fact, from the North American country they said that Cartes joined the Colorado Party in 2009 paying members to support his candidacy before the 2013 elections. But how much of the American pressure influenced the elections?
Cartes is president of the Colorado Party. Obviously it didn’t affect him too much, because he wins the December inmates, having already been declared corrupt. On top of that, he triumphed with a wide margin, and his candidate, Santiago Peña, wins the internal elections to be a candidate for president.
Therefore, yesterday’s results confirmed that In Paraguayan society, corruption is not perceived as something negative in the electorate.
Who is Santiago Peña, president-elect of Paraguay: the economist who promised “more money in the pockets”…
The president-elect, Santiago Peña, was considered a kind of disciple of Cartes, he was even his Minister of Economy at just 37 years old. Correct?
Yes, indeed, it was his finance minister. The idea of borrowed power is installed, that is, that power will be elsewhere, rather than in Peña. That’s why, he must solve it by building autonomy in his government.
It is there where it is considered that there may be governance problems and the challenges that it will have within the Colorado Party with weighty references that oppose the leadership of Cartes. And outside of that party they see this Chartist model as something negative for the democratic development of the country.
AO JL
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