Paraguay and its “significantly corrupt” candidates

In a week marked by the health problems of former President Lugo and the accusations of corruption against Vice President Velasquez and former President Cartes by the US State Department, Paraguayan political analyst Milciades Benitez breaks down the electoral future of Paraguay in a dialogue with Sputnik.

Paraguay’s Vice-President Hugo Velázquez announced his resignation from his presidential pre-candidacy on behalf of the hegemonic Colorado Party – officially known as the National Republican Association – and from his current position as Vice-President of the Republic.
Velázquez’s resignation comes after the US State Department included him on its blacklist for alleged corruption, informed the US ambassador in Asunción, Marc Ostfield.

”I am going to resign my pre-candidacy for the presidency of the Republic, and I will present my resignation as Vice President of the Republic (…) I will present my resignation, and I will go out as an ordinary citizen to defend my name”, assured Hugo Velázquez to the local radio station AM 1080.

“The US Secretary of State [Chancellor], Antony Blinken, announced the designation of Vice President Hugo Velázquez due to his participation in significant acts of corruption, including the offering of a bribe to a public official”, said the ambassador in a press conference, reported local radio station ABC Cardinal.

Velázquez allegedly offered a bribe to a Paraguayan public official to obstruct an investigation that threatened the vice-president himself and his financial interests, adds the US agency.

On July 22, 2022, the US State Department had already sanctioned former Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes (2013-2018) for corruption, banning him and his immediate family from entering the North American country.

COLORADO EARTHQUAKE

Paraguay is characterized by a high distrust of the alternation in power, where the ruling Colorado Party is the party that has been in government for more than 70 years, the same party that sustained the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989).

In this context, Paraguayan political analyst Milciades Benítez, in a conversation with Sputnik, described the internal situation of the Colorado Party as a “political earthquake” since the indictment for corruption against former Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes by the US State Department on July 22, 2022.

Within the Colorado Party, two preponderant factions are internally disputing leadership, and internally, on the same day that candidates are chosen for the presidential elections, the candidate for party president is voted on.

Then, says Benítez, “in a list, the President of the Republic, Mario Abdo Benítez -as a candidate for President of the Colorado Party-, with his current vice-president to succeed him in the Executive. In front, he had Horacio Cartes, who is running for President of the ANR, with his candidate for President [of the Republic] Santiago Peña, who was his Minister of Finance”.

The US embassy communicated the decision of the State Department to declare Horacio Cartes as “significantly corrupt”, “which in itself was a political earthquake in Paraguay because he has an indisputable leadership within his movement [Honor Colorado] because he is the leading financier and the visible head of that internal movement. There is no Santiago Peña without Horacio Cartes, that is a political reality,” says Benítez.

On the other side, “with the designation of the vice-president and presidential candidate Hugo Velásquez, what he did almost immediately after the embassy’s communiqué was to announce that he was withdrawing from the presidential race and at the same time that this week he would be presenting his resignation as vice-president of the Republic”.

The internal movement to which Velásquez belongs “has already announced who will replace him as a candidate, and it is the current Minister of Public Works, Arnoldo Wiens, a very conservative candidate, who has a background in a Protestant church, from a Mennonite family. He has a trajectory of a doctorate in theology, he was a pastor, and then he entered the political arena”, detailed the Paraguayan analyst.

He is a candidate “who means to follow the line of the current President of the Republic, he is not a bad candidate for the colorado internal elections in his traditionalist and conservative logic”, recognizes Benítez.

“What everyone is waiting for is to know if the list that the US embassy was going to provide has been exhausted or if a new list is still pending in a few weeks”, emphasizes the political analyst.

US INTERFERENCE

According to Benitez, to speak of US interference in the current domestic politics after the public accusations communicated by the US Embassy in Asunción depends on the political sector.

“We are in a very heated electoral stage; those affected talk about US interference, but the predominant opinion is that this line is quite isolated. Because both designated did not have a very good reputation in the country either, in terms of the image concerning corruption, and the other thing that remains a little in doubt is that the embassy did not provide any data or what are concrete facts to which it refers,” adds the analyst.

Amid this political debate, “the definition of the political trial of the attorney general of the State on whose head falls the responsibility of investigating possible punishable acts was pending”, says Benítez.

“As far as I know, there is no file open in Paraguay against these two people. Everything is still a political debate. Judicially speaking, there is not much to say”.

THE LEFT IS STILL IN A VACUUM

Esperanza Martínez, the candidate for the leftist conglomerate Frente Guasú, “has just announced that she is renouncing her presidential aspirations and is aiming to be reelected senator. With this, she leaves the left practically empty-handed in the presidential dispute”, affirms Benítez.

However, according to the Paraguayan analyst, “there is currently underway the formation of an opposition Concertación so that through popular vote, parties identified with the center, center-right, and center-left, choose which is the alternative to the Colorado Party for the general elections”.

“So this is going to be decided between the candidate of the Liberal Party, Efraín Alegre, with the candidate of the Patria Querida party, which is a Christian Democrat party, more right-wing. Wednesday [August 17] is the deadline for registering candidates, and at this moment, it seems that the left is not going to present a candidate for President, at least within the Concertación”, affirms Benítez.

However, “there is a candidate who is running on the outside, which is very difficult to define,” says Benítez about Euclides Acevedo, former Foreign Minister of the current Government and former Minister of the Interior, “who, at the same time, had a lot of personal closeness with [former President Fernando] Lugo (2008-2012), but for the analyst, “he does not close what is the front that Acevedo is looking for, in principle it seems that he is going directly to the general elections, without going through the Concertación’s internal elections”.

“It also remains to be seen how the Frente Guasú remains; the man who stretched votes within that electoral force was the figure of Lugo, who was even much more comprehensive than that of the Frente Guasú itself. We have to see if they do not lose electoral base with Lugo’s health problem”, explained Benítez.

CHILAVERT?

According to the Paraguayan political analyst, “the characteristic in Paraguay is that polls are only reliable, within the framework of what could be called reliability, once the complete list of candidates is available and also depending on what happens in the primaries of the Colorado Party”.

For this reason, “we will have to see how the candidacies within the Colorado Party, as well as within the Concertación, will turn out”. At the moment, “Chilavert has very little attraction in the media, and there is no poll that places him as a candidate with chances, but the elections are still several months away,” says Benítez.

The Colorado Party is electorally mighty in Paraguay, “I do not know if there is a party with the internal electoral strength that the Colorado Party has in any other Latin American country. Some decades before, one could understand how the PRI functioned in Mexico”.

There is a phrase in Paraguay, “if the Colorado Party arrives united to the general elections, they will likely win again”.

Now, “if the internal elections are very violent in terms of accusations that make both factions practically irreconcilable, perhaps a candidate outside the Colorado Party could emerge who has that angry vote with what has happened in the internal elections, then the figure of Chilavert could emerge. Today he is not a candidate with chances”, concluded the analyst.

With information from Sputnik