Sunday for history or the Colorado Party becoming even more eternal in power? That is the question in the elections this Sunday in Paraguay, which decides its president for the next five years.
If Santiago Peña, 44, former Minister of Finance, wins, it means that the National Republican Association (ANR), popularly known as the Colorado Party, will add another five years to 70 years of dominance in Paraguayan politics, with the sole exception of the leftist mandate. Fernando Lugo between 2008 and 2012.
If the third time is the charm, and Efraín Alegre, 60, a lawyer, manages to reach the López Palace at the head of the Concertación, a coalition of 14 parties ranging from the right to the left, Paraguay will have joined the wave of governments with a progressive bias in Latin America.
“I have no doubt that the president will be me, this was a false polarization,” Peña said during a recent interview with EL MUNDO. Alegre, after voting, denounced that groups of drug traffickers took over a polling place, intimidating the population: “And we already know which team they play for.”
The Paraguayan elections are being closely watched by China, which in recent years has managed to get several Central American countries to cut their ties with Taiwan to start relations with Beijing. Asunción is the only country in South America that recognizes Taipei, a historic Colorado Party politician dating back more than 60 years.
Alegre is in favor of pivoting to open China’s huge markets to domestically produced soybeans and beef. He maintains that the current round trip with Taiwan is disadvantageous for Paraguay. Peña has promised to maintain relations with Taipei.
A major hydroelectric powerhouse, Paraguay is one of the world’s top soybean exporters and a major supplier of beef, but is currently unable to sell directly to China due to its history of diplomatic recognition of Taiwan.
Peña’s main proposal involves the creation of 500,000 jobs in five years, a promise of depth in a country of just 7.6 million inhabitants and barely smaller than Spain.
Alegre wants to implement a new energy policy that allows lowering the price of the electricity rate and recovering the money that the State lost, according to him, due to corruption, in addition to practicing an austerity policy in the public administration.
The election is also being watched with great interest by the United States, which has intervened decisively in Paraguayan politics in the last year. Not only did he sink the current president’s candidate, Mario Abdo Benítez, his vice president, Hugo Velázquez, by declaring him “significantly corrupt,” but he also attached the same label to the powerful former president Horacio Cartes, Peña’s mentor, who was his finance minister. .
Abdo and Peña represent different factions of the Colorado Party, a political organization with few parallels in the world: 55 percent of Paraguayans eligible to vote are affiliated with the party, which Peña defines as a movement that embodies “Paraguayness.” The dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled between 1954 and 1989, did so mounted on the structure of the Colorado Party.
Peña and Alegre claim favoritism in the latest polls released. A poll by Atlas-Intel at the beginning of April gave Alegre a small margin of advantage, while another by local consultancy Grau y Asociados placed Peña as the winner by 16 points.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
