Paraguay, between Red Continuity and Coalition | Countdown to elect the next president

Paraguayan Next Sunday the 30th will determine who will be its president in a single election event. There will be no vote between the two main candidates who have the best position in the polls and are far from the others: Santiago Peña of the ruling Colorado Party and Efrain Alegre from the concert.. On August 15, one of them will take office until 2028. In addition, 17 governors will be voted on in all their departments, 45 senators and 80 representatives.

In a deeply unequal country, the largest Rural people A historic political hegemony in South America and colorful, the opposition has a real chance of displacing him from government for a second term. The previous one In 2008 When the bishop Fernando Lugo 61 years of continuity were interrupted, including the long dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954–1989).

Cortez is the candidate

Preparation of Pena’s nomination Inside the Colorado Party There he defeated former evangelical bishop Arnoldo Wiens, who was supported by the current president. Mario Abdo Benitez. Support everywhere Horace CardsThe former president, who ruled between 2013 and 2018, will try to keep the main right-wing force in his 44-year-old former finance minister Lopez’s palace.

Bina was a member of the Real Radical Liberal Party (PLRA) for 21 years until he joined the ruling National Republican Party (ANR) in 2016. At that time he was already an employee of the billionaire Cortes, a banker, media owner and businessman in the food and tobacco industries, who controls about 70 companies. America is sanctioned for corruption.

The measure was used by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The document, dated January 26, states that he “engaged in corrupt practices before, during and after his tenure as President of Paraguay.” The United States often takes these foreign claims of authority with and without evidence. Similar action was taken against the country’s current vice president, Hugo Velázquez, for “engaging in systemic corruption that undermines democratic institutions in Paraguay.”

Alegre will run for the presidency for a third consecutive term, presenting himself as the leader of a coalition of fourteen parties. Bishop Fernando Lugo’s former public works minister lost to Cortes in 2013 and to Benitez in 2018. But now he is doing well in the polls. It comes from a significant part of the political support he receives In front of the kvassA mosaic of progressive forces cut into the Colorado party’s dominance in 2008, and it only appears in elections for legislative seats. Today he is torn between the lawyer who leads the PRLA and a candidate who could serve as an arbiter in the election: Euclides Acevedo, former interior minister of the current president, but also an official in other Colorado governments. The question in Paraguay is who will get the most votes in their candidacy. Yes Pena or Alegre.

Paraguayan Bolsonaro

Other polls, carefully circulated by the Cortes group, project a fourth candidate with double-digit percentages ahead of Alegre. Controversial former senator Paraguayan Bayo Cubas, born in Washington, USA, the son of a military man, was converted to the country’s burgeoning far-right. There are researchers They compare him to Jair Bolsonaro, because of his violent words and bad behavior, but he has no connection to the armed forces, is in favor of legalizing marijuana and has announced that he will go against the landowners. In this paradoxical combo, he emerged as an anti-establishment candidate and expected 15 percent of the vote.

Paraguay comes into these elections with a stable currency like the Guaraní – which will be 80 years old in 2023 and the second oldest in Latin America -, with an annual inflation rate close to 6.5 percent. Dependence on America in geopolitical matters is significant. This year The government signed a memorandum of understanding with Washington allowing US military forces to control the so-called Hydrovia of the Paraná and Paraguay rivers. The agreement was signed by local President Julio Arriola and Ambassador Mark Ostfeld. Argentina’s foreign ministry asked Asuncion for explanations for the decision, citing security concerns over the presence of military forces from outside the region.

The Paraguayan press is divided in its support for the candidates. Nazion Media de Cartes group, led daily Nation And this includes cable TV channels, digital portals and radios like AM 970, which are playing a major role behind Beena, who is tipped as the winner in the elections according to the polls she spreads. Two of the largest circulation newspapers, ABC color And At the last minute Support the coalition for a new Paraguay Alegre and its deputy, the young former housing minister Soledad Núñez. The pair appear above the Colorado party in polls, according to media outlets not owned by the former president. Another possibility mentioned is a technical tie-up between the two main candidates to win the elections.

Without a chance, in all polls, Argentina’s old acquaintance, the former goalkeeper Jose Luis Sylavert, the club where he was world champion in the past at San Lorenzo and Velez Sarsfield. It is put forward by the Party of Youth (PJ) with the declared aim of “confronting socialism and the left”. He studied Patricia Bullrich’s plan to run for mayor in the La Madanza party, the most populous province of Buenos Aires. “Football, the dynamics of the unthinkable,” said the well-remembered sports journalist Dante Panzeri, a writer with a sharp pen and a sketch of the tragedies of other eras that repeat themselves today. Sylvard is not the last candidate to use his fame to try for the presidency. There are many pioneers in Latin America.

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