RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The party is committed to returning to power and becoming Paraguay’s predominant force, as it was in the 6 decades preceding 2008.
The Colorado party leader, multimillionaire tobacco entrepreneur and sports leader Horacio Cartes, is campaigning against the ruling Partido Liberal Radical Auténtico in next month’s municipal elections, and has a good chance of winning, according to the polls.
The next presidential election will only occur in 2023.
In any event, in spite of this period away from the Executive branch, the Partido Colorado maintains a well-oiled machinery, which has neither lost strength nor influence and keeps its clout in Congress and the Judiciary intact.
The Partido Colorado, or the Asociación Nacional Republicana (ANR), was founded in the 19th century by President Bernardino Caballero, a military man who ruled the country after the traumatic War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) and after Brazil’s occupation of Paraguay.
It emerged in 1887 as the conservative and nationalist response to the emergence of the Partido Liberal Radical Auténtico, which ruled the country in the first half of the 20th century. The Colorados returned to power in 1948 and decided not to abandon it: they banned the other parties (a rule that remained in force until 1963) so that no other organization could present candidates.
Since then, the colorados, with or without fraud, won all presidential elections with the exception of 2008, when their candidate, Blanca Ovelar, was defeated by Fernando Lugo.
But the 4 years that the former bishop (impeached and removed from office last June by Congress in a controversial process) headed the country failed to dismantle the party structure erected and entrenched in the machinery of power for 61 years and with no real opposition during the years of dictator Stroessner’s regime (1954-1989).
Of Paraguay’s 6.3 million inhabitants, 1.5 million are militants of the Partido Colorado, and of all public officials, nearly 50% belong to its ranks. The party’s presence that is also very marked in the Armed Forces.
But Cartes promises changes and to leave behind the old practices if elected. “Here it has become a custom for those who reach the government to believe that the country belongs to them. These habits of the political class are what destroyed the country,” Cartes said.