Array
ASUNCIÓParaguayans voted overwhelmingly to keep the long-ruling Colorado Party in power for five more years, backing its presidential candidate and giving it majorities in both houses of Congress.
Santiago Peña, a 44-year-old economist, had 43% of the votes in a preliminary count from Sunday’s election, with nearly all voting places reporting. That was far ahead of the 27% held by his closest challenger, Efraín Alegre of the Pact for a New Paraguay, a broad-based opposition coalition that had united in an effort to bring to an end Colorado’s seven-decade stranglehold on power.
The conservative Colorado Party also had a strong showing in other races, winning 15 of the 17 governorships up for election and getting majorities in both the Senate and the lower house.
Led by Alegre, the opposition coalition had been optimistic it was going to be able to win votes due to widespread unhappiness over high levels of corruption and failures in the health and education systems, which took center stage during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yet a significant number of non-Colorado voters instead supported Paraguayo Cubas, a right-wing populist outsider who received 23% of the vote with a strong anti-establishment message, a larger share than had been expected.
There were 13 candidates in all, but Paraguay doesn’t require a presidential candidate to get more than 50% of the votes, giving the victory to whomever gets the most votes.
Peña celebrated a showing that on Aug. 15 will make him Paraguay’s youngest president since the return of democracy in 1989.
“Today we’re not celebrating a personal triumph, we’re celebrating the victory of a people who with their vote chose the path of social peace, dialogue, fraternity, and national reconciliation,” Peña told a crowd of supporters Sunday night. “Long live Paraguay! Long live the Colorado Party!”
Alegre acknowledged defeat soon thereafter.
“Today, the results indicate that perhaps the effort we have made was not enough,” Alegre told reporters, adding that divisions among the opposition “prevented us from reaching the goal of being able to bring about the change that the majority of Paraguayans are asking of us.
