Opinion – Latinoamérica21: Who are the main presidential pre-candidates in Paraguay?

On December 18, internal elections were held for the two traditional parties in Paraguay. The Colorado Party and the Authentic Radical Liberal Party have defined the list of candidates for Congress, governors and presidential candidates for the national elections to be held on April 30th.

In the ruling Colorado party, the candidate proposed by the Executive, the recent former minister of Public Works and Communications and former evangelical pastor, Arnoldo Wiens, failed in his presidential aspirations. In Paraguay, where the Constitution does not provide for presidential reelection, it is a rule that candidates proposed by the Executive are discarded in internal elections.

With 51.6% of the votes of the members of the Colorado Party, Santiago Peña was chosen as candidate for the presidency of the Republic of Paraguay. He is a successful economist, aged 44, who had an administrative career in the public sector with a long career at the Central Bank of Paraguay. He was also Minister of Finance between 2015 and 2017 and has experience in the private sector as a member of the board of Banco Basa, which is part of the “Grupo Cartes”.

Peña comes from a traditional elite family, has an established family, is charismatic, eloquent and enjoys great public acceptance, which is why he has an ideal image for a conservative and pro-family society. One of his weaknesses is that he was a member of the Liberal Party from the age of 17 until October 2016, when, as finance minister in a Colorado government and under extreme pressure from the media, he had to join the Colorado Party.

This antecedent is a solid argument in the mouth of his detractors, who emphasize his disloyalty to a party with a hard vote, as Colorado is in all its institutional structure. In fact, this was probably the main cause of his defeat in the 2018 internal presidential elections.

Another challenge that Santiago Peña faces is the sponsorship of former President Horacio Cartes, who is under the “shadow” of accusations of illegal cigarette trafficking to Brazil, smuggling, currency evasion (a process that deprived him of his freedom in the 1980s for some time, although the sentence was later overturned) and money laundering. As a result, he was recently designated by the US Embassy as a “significantly corrupt” person and, along with his family, lost his US visa.

Considering that Santiago Peña’s political rise took place alongside Horacio Cartes, although the latter was recently elected president of the Colorado Party, there is a section of the public that is very critical of his figure.

The election of the second most numerous party in number of affiliates, the Authentic Radical Liberal Party, followed a different model. For years, the party has been running for president through alliances or national concerts with other opposition parties, in order to increase its electorate and strengthen its structure. For this reason, its “internal party” elections are a sui generis model, with an open electoral list, debated even in judicial instances, after testing, for the first time, an internal election open to all citizens in general.

As a result of a difference of more than 248,000 votes over his closest opponent, Liberal Efraín Alegre stood as a presidential candidate representing the Concertación. This family man, lawyer and university professor, served two legislative terms as a deputy and one more as a national senator. Even between 2008 and 2010 he served as Minister of Public Works and enjoys a high level of public acceptance.

He was also an opposition presidential candidate previously in 2013 when he was defeated by Horacio Cartes and in 2018 when he narrowly lost to incumbent President Mario Abdo Benítez.

However, his image has been eroded by the bad relationship he has with the media and the fact that he has many lawsuits open against him, which earned him the popular nickname of “Efraudín”. Alegre was also unable to unify his fragmented party, nor was he able to account for party funds as president of the Liberal Party. Even within the board there are those who criticize his administration of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party during his presidency.

In addition, Alegre chose Soledad Nuñez as a partner, an independent and non-voterating member from the NGO sphere, who rose in the government of Horacio Cartes. Nuñez, apparently, will not bring his constituency, speech or image to the presidential campaign.

The Concertación also faces another major challenge: it no longer has the support, as it did in previous elections, of the Frente Guazú, as the coalition of leftist parties in Paraguay is known that mobilizes large numbers of rural and peasant voters in each election.

The Frente Guazú, which won the presidency in coalition with the liberals in 2008, is now fragmented, disorganized and biased, after the disappearance of the leadership of former president Fernando Lugo, who is recovering after suffering a stroke. In the face of the absence of the former president, the Febrerista Party, with a socialist trajectory, dragged the leaders of the Guazú Front and mobilized at the national level, seeking votes outside the national coalition, which will increase a significant drain of the liberal/leftist and peasant electorate, votes that in previous elections accompanied the coalition led by Efraín Alegre.

In addition, the Nova República movement, led by Euclides Acevedo, who won his nomination on December 18 in the internal elections and was Mario Abdo’s chancellor until April this year, will also take votes from the Guazú Front.

Once the primary elections are over, these candidates will have to position themselves by April 30, without discarding the surprises that may arise as a result of serious citizen insecurity, economic instability and social dissatisfaction with the institutions, in order to decide the political future of Paraguay in the presidential elections.