Santiago Peña, a conservative economist who ran in Paraguay’s presidential election on Sunday, won about 43 percent of the vote: Peña is a member of the Colorado Party, which has governed Paraguay since 1947, with only one brief interruption from 2008 to 2012, and that precisely for this reason he has been defined as a «dinosaur of Latin American politics». Peña is 44 years old and will be the youngest president of the country since 1989, when Paraguay adopted a democratic political system with the end of the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner.
Even though Peña’s party has ruled the country for decades, the outcome of these elections was uncertain: Peña, a rather divisive figure in the Colorado Party, represents the opposition to outgoing president Mario Abdo Benítez, a symbol of the more traditional wing of the party . And one of the most central demands of Peña’s electoral campaign, the desire to maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan and therefore not to approach China (which considers Taiwan part of its territory and has no relations with those who recognize it as an autonomous state), does not she was believed to be very popular with the electorate.
With a turnout of around 63 percent, Peña got about 15 percent more votes than his opponent Efraín Alegre, leader of the Authentic Liberal Radical Party (PRLA) and heads an alliance of center and centre-left parties called National Concertation. The two candidates had been chosen through the primaries which had taken place in December 2022.
On Sunday, there was not only the vote to elect the new president, but also to renew the deputies and senators of the two chambers of parliament and to choose the 17 governors of the departments into which the country is divided from an administrative point of view. The Colorado Party also won hands down here: He earned the majority in both chambers and won elections in 15 of the 17 departments.
Peña will remain in office for 5 years: the Constitution of Paraguay provides that he can govern for a single term. He will find himself managing a country of about 7 million inhabitants with an economic crisis greatly aggravated by the consequences of the pandemic, which has brought Also to a sharp increase in public debt.
The economic crisis in Paraguay – combined with the perception that politics was incapable of managing it – was one of the reasons why, unlike previous elections, the outcome of Sunday’s elections was uncertain: Benítez, the outgoing president, had lost many votes due to the consequences of the crisis on the functioning of a series of public services, as well as the allegations of corruption recently leveled against the top exponents of the party. A general discontent has spread among Paraguayans, also evident in the excellent results (about 23 percent) of the populist Paraguayo Cubas party.
The positions of the two candidates on Taiwan also had a great influence on the electoral campaign. Paraguay is the only country in South America – and one of 13 worldwide – to formally recognize Taiwan as an independent state. Peña’s opposing candidate, Alegre, had strongly criticized these diplomatic ties, arguing among other things that they weakened the local economy by hindering the sale of soybeans and meat to China. one of the main buyers to the world of these products. Santiago Peña had instead promised to preserve relations with Taiwan, saying that that bond “is priceless, but is based on principles and values”.