Campaigns for the Paraguayan presidential election enter the final stretch

The elections in Paraguay, where votes will be cast for the positions of president, vice president, senators, deputies, and governors of the Departments for the 2023-2028 term, will be held next April 30.

According to Paraguayan electoral legislation, there will be a single round of voting for president in which the winner will be the candidate who obtains the highest number of votes.

Thus, whoever wins the total number of votes will assume the country’s Presidency on August 15 of this year.

The main contenders are Efraín Alegre of the Concertación para un Nuevo Paraguay party and Santiago Peña of the Partido Colorado-ANR currently in power.

Peña was finance minister during Horacio Cartes’ term in office and is considered a wing of the ANR very much at odds with the Colorado faction of the current president, Mario Abdo Benítez.

His campaign has focused on the fight against insecurity and the defense of traditional family values.

Meanwhile, Alegre represents an alliance of 14 opposition parties and organizations whose unifying element is ending the ANR’s political monopoly in Paraguay.

The Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics states that both candidates are under pressure to reduce a fiscal deficit that was 3% of the gross domestic product last year, either by reducing spending or by increasing taxes on agriculture, the main engine of the country’s economy.

This is Paraguay’s ninth general and national election since the coup that ended Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship in 1989.

With information from Telesurtv