Paraguay 2023: at the gates of a historic election

By Yair Cybel and Sergio Pascual

On April 30, 2023, presidential and departmental elections are held in Paraguay. In accordance with Paraguayan electoral legislation, a single electoral round is held in which the winner of the presidential election will be the candidate who obtains the highest number of votes.

The presidential binomials (president/vice president) will be previously defined in internal elections on December 18. These elections are simultaneous, but not mandatory.

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August 31 is the deadline to register the alternatives in said primaries.

For the first time in the Paraguayan electoral history, the justice authorized that one of the internals be carried out with the official national register instead of the party registers.

The Concertación (opposition space) will use the national electoral register and both party affiliates and non-affiliates may participate in the internal vote, including Colorado Party affiliates that may vote in the Coalition’s primaries.

For their part, the Colorados will only use their list of party members to settle their internal vote.

It is not allowed to participate in more than one internal.

Everything points to the fact that these early primaries will operate as a kind of pseudo-first round, advancing the dispute between the ruling Colorado Party and the Concertación, an electoral platform that, if everything continues as expected, will in practice bring together all the opponent parties.

COORDINATION FOR A NEW PARAGUAY

The current political pulse in Paraguay is marked by the emergence of the Coalition for a New Paraguay, an electoral platform resulting from the multiparty agreement between 23 parties and 2 opposition movements to the National Republican Association (ANR), better known as the Colorado Party. The ANR has governed Paraguay for the last 70 years with the exception of the brief parenthesis of the government of the progressive Fernando Lugo.

The Concertación brings together the opposition offer in a single formula for the presidential elections and has already agreed on 12 common programmatic axes in areas such as health, education, social development, the management of Itaipú and Yacyretá, and food security. Among the spaces that make up the concertation, the historic Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA) stands out, the Guasu-Ñemongeta Front (progressive group whose reference is former President Lugo), the National Encounter Party (of the popular deputy Kattya González), Patria Querida (conservative) and the Movimiento Despertar (which brings together independent candidates who join the Coalition).

The Agreement does not extend to the elections for departmental governments and Congress, institutions to which the different political forces will present their own independent candidacies.

The most important force in the Concertación space is the PLRA, a political organization where internal sectors of the center left (Efraín Alegre) and center right (Blas Llano) coexist. Efraín Alegre, current president of the PLRA and presidential candidate in 2013 and 2018, is their candidate in pectore.

The definition of the presidential binomial of the Coalition will be marked by the decisions that are taken on August 30, when Alegre defines his formula to accompany him in the binomial. This duo will be the favorite of the Concertación primaries in December. To date, it is known that Alegre wants his vice president to be a woman who can complement his profile.

Among the most competitive profiles to occupy the presidential duo stands out Esperanza Martínez, former Minister of Health of Fernando Lugo and current senator of the Guasú Front. Martínez would contribute accumulated management experience in a sensitive issue such as public health, in addition to the reference to the Lugo presidency, considered by Paraguayans as the best in history (CELAG, 2022).

The figure of Kattya González, current deputy for the Partido de Encuentro Nacional (center-left), also appears in the pools. With a fiery speech and a good presence on social networks, this young social democratic leader even flirts with contesting the candidacy for the presidency of the Coalition to Efraín Alegre, although it is probable that finally ‒with the new accumulated forces of these months‒ she will opt for a place in the Senate.

Euclides Acevedo, Foreign Minister of Mario Abdo until April of this year, after threatening to join the Coalition, finally, if he attends, he will do so alone, which today makes him an unlikely “outsider” of Paraguayan politics.

COLORADO’S INTERNAL

The second great axis of the Paraguayan political scene is characterized by the fracture of the ANR between Horacio Cartes (former president) and Mario Abdo (current president). This division is not due to ideological factors but to economic and internal power disputes typical of an institutionalized party (a sort of Paraguayan PRI).

The following presidential binomials have already been presented to the ANR internally:

On the one hand, the Republican Force current, with the support of President Abdo, who presented Hugo Velásquez (current Vice President) and Juan Manuel Brunetti (Minister of Education) as his binomial.

On the other hand, the current Honor Colorado, by Horacio Cartes, which presented Santiago Peña (former Minister of Economy) and Pedro Alliana (deputy and president of the ANR). This formula, according to the pollster Ati Snead (July 2022), is the one with the greatest support, with 44.4%, compared to 29.8% for Velásquez. Peña’s candidacy, however, could be hampered by the inclusion of Cartes on the Engel list of the United States, a list of “significantly corrupt” people.

With information from Celag