Elections in Paraguay: the young conservative heir and the historical opponent

April 29, 2023

Santiago Peña, a 44-year-old economist, heir to the hegemonic conservative party, or Efrain Alegre, a 60-year-old centrist lawyer, historical opponent of the system: both are the favorites in Sunday’s presidential election in Paraguay, one of the most undecided in the South American country.

An economist by training, who came to politics because knowledge alone “was not enough to change things”, Santiago Peña describes himself as a man of responsibility, deeply in tune with Paraguay, a “conservative society” – like his Colorado party – on the traditional values of the family, refuge in “a world of convulsions and dehumanized”.

Son of merchants, he often cites his young fatherhood, at 18, as the driving force of his life, which pushed him to study and work early, entering the Central Bank at 20, then after a scholarship to Columbia University ( New York), at the International Monetary Fund, alongside teaching.

Although long affiliated with the Liberal Party (center-left), Santiago Peña was Minister of Finance (2015-2017) in the government of Horacio Cartes, of the big rival Colorado party, before joining him in 2016. Pure careerist, according to his critics.

Unlucky candidate for the Colorado primaries in 2018 (defeated by the current head of state Mario Abdo Benitez), Santiago Peña won this time against the candidate of the outgoing president. With the support of his mentor Cartes. Which earned him to be accused by his rivals of “puppet” of the wealthy ex-president.

Of the accusations (and sanctions) of corruption from Washington against Horacio Cartes, Santiago Peña told AFP that they made a lot of noise”, but that the former head of state “clearly challenged them”. assures that it will not affect the “very deep” relationship between the United States and Paraguay if he is elected.

For him, Paraguay is a “young democracy that needs to be taken care of”. And he takes an ambivalent look at the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989), with “the immense human rights record”, but which made it possible to break with “half a century of instability and develop institutions”.

Education — which profoundly marked his personal career — employment and family hold a central place in the program of the candidate with youthful traits, who presents himself as both the image of renewal and the guarantor of continuity. .

-Efrain Alegre, slayer of “the mafia”-

Parliamentarian for more than 15 years, minister under a rare left government (2008 to 2012), twice already presidential candidate, Efrain Alegre is a seasoned politician, who has public action in his blood, and is determined to end up with what he calls “the mafia” of Colorado.

Of his studies in law and political science in the 80s, this son of a bus driver and a catechist, says that they were “a youthful revolt, a tool in the fight against the dictatorship” of Stroessner, who had to define his course. Very early, within the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (social-liberal).

This led him to Parliament, deputy, senator, minister under the presidency of Fernando Lugo (left), but also… to prison: in 2021, he spent 20 days in preventive detention for an alleged false invoice from his party, which ends in dismissal. “Political persecution”, according to him.

Defeated in the presidential election in 2013 and 2018 (by little), he feels victory this time, especially since his coalition Concertacion Nacional (center-left) will have a device allowing him to control “all the polling stations”. He remains convinced of a “fraud component” in 2018.

Above all, he considers that the urgency is now widely felt to “give justice to the country”, whose “institutions are threatened by organized crime, which buys prosecutors, judges, corrupts parliamentarians”.

Access to health care, a major deficiency of an unequal Paraguay, is also one of his key themes, as is an austerity cure, prior to tax reform, for a public sector symbol, according to him, of a system clientelist “who steals the country”.

And if he mocks his rival as a simple “secretary” of ex-president Cartes, this practicing Catholic and father of four children, joins him on societal themes such as homosexual marriage or abortion, to which both oppose.

Further from the concerns of the Paraguayans, it is also on the diplomatic level that the two men oppose each other. Unlike Peña, Alegre warns that he would “re-examine” diplomatic ties with Taiwan with a view to a possible rapprochement with China.