2023-05-01 06:56:08
The 44-year-old economist Santiago Peña, candidate of the Colorado Party (conservative) in power for seven decades in Paraguay, easily won the presidential election on Sunday against his center-left rival Efrain Alegre, who strongly denounced the endemic corruption from the country.
The former IMF official and ex-finance minister of President Horacio Cartes (2013-2018) implicated by the United States for corruption, won with 42.7% of the vote, against 27.4% in Efrain Alegre, after 99.9% of the votes counted by the Electoral Tribunal. However, the polls announced for a few weeks a tight ballot, a rare fact in Paraguay. Indeed, the “Colorado” has dominated political life almost without interruption for 76 years in Paraguay, except for a parenthesis on the left under Fernando Lugo (2008-2012).
Shortly before the officialization of the result, Mr. Peña proclaimed his victory, promising to “banish the fatalism that condemns us to our present (…) Starting tomorrow, we will begin to draw the Paraguay that we all want, without flagrant inequalities or social injustices. We have a lot to do”.
An “anti-system” candidate, Paraguayo Cubas, with a virulent anti-parliamentary rhetoric, is in 3rd place with 22.9%. “He took votes from both camps, but the most injured are the opponents” of the Alegre coalition, political analyst Roberto Codas diagnosed for AFP.
Colorado’s influence is also palpable in the Senate, where with 43% of the vote (23% in the center-left), it will have an absolute majority, as well as in the Chamber of Deputies according to projections based on partial results. . He also won 14 of the 17 seats of provincial governors.
A stigmatized but influential ex-president
Santiago Peña was running for president for the first time, after being defeated in the Colorado primaries in 2018 by current head of state Mario Abdo Benitez, who could not run. He will succeed him at the head of the country in August, for a period of 5 years.
Poverty will be a major challenge of his mandate, in an agro-exporting Paraguay with enviable prosperity in Latin America (4.5% growth expected in 2023), but with glaring inequalities (24.7% poor). He promised the creation of 500,000 jobs, without great detail, and better access to public health, stricken.
Efrain Alegre, a 60-year-old lawyer who once campaigned against the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989), suffered a third failure in as many applications. In vain, he posed as a slayer of what he calls the patronage “mafia” of Colorado, “linked to organized crime”, a system now “collapsed”, according to him.
Corruption has indeed weighed on this election, in a country ranked 137th out of 180 in the ranking of the perception of corruption by the NGO Transparency International. And his shadow is not about to let go of the young president.
During his campaign, Santiago Peña had to fend off the stigma associated with his mentor and active supporter, tobacco tycoon Horacio Cartes. Washington qualified him in 2022 as “significantly corrupt” and banned him from entering or transacting in the United States, yet historically an unwavering ally of Asuncion.
Because in a Paraguay with porous borders (landlocked between Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia), a transit point for Andean cocaine, corruption is rampant, and is now killing: a prosecutor, an anti-drug mayor and a journalist were murdered in 2022.
Celebrating his victory, Mr. Peña appeared at length alongside Mr. Cartes, still president of the Colorado Party, thanking him warmly for this “great victory”.
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