US sanctions against former President Cartes harm the Colorado Party in the Paraguayan electoral campaign

Santiago Peña and Efraín Alegre, the two main contenders for the presidency of Paraguay. Francarballopy / Norberto Duarte (AFP)

The conservative Colorado Party is risking its hegemony on April 30 against an opposition coalition that is also conservative, the Concertación Nacional, led by the Liberal Party.

The Colorado Party, which is actually called the National Republican Association (ANR), has dominated the state and the economic and political life of Paraguay for decades.

But his power is in crisis since the US Treasury decided to sanction former Colorado president Horacio Cartes (2013-1018) for "incurring in acts of corruption before, during and after his term as president of Paraguay."

Cartes is accused by the US and even by the current Paraguayan president, Mario Abdo Benítez, of tobacco smuggling -with his main company, Tabacalera del Este SA (Tabesa)- and of money laundering (Banco Amambay, now Banco Basa) and of being linked for this reason to the financing of groups considered terrorist by the White House, such as Hezbollah.

"The electoral landscape changed dramatically after the sanctions against (former president) Horacio Cartes became effective," says historian Milda Rivarola about the inclusion of Cartes on the list of people who cannot enter the US or do business with their companies .

A man votes during the latest Paraguayan presidential election, on April 22, 2018, in Asunción.picture alliance (via Getty Images)

“Chartism is not Coloradism.

He infiltrated the party with his money," Rivarola argues about the former president who owns one of the largest fortunes in America, who had never publicly participated in politics and had not even registered to vote until 2013, when he ran for president with The Colorados.

He won Efraín Alegre in that election, the opposition candidate who is now running for the third time in a row.

Few pay attention to local voting intention polls.

Some give more than 10 or 30 points to the Colorados.

"They have been manipulated a lot, they are used for other purposes," says the director of the Center for Analysis and Diffusion of the Paraguayan Economy (Cadep), Fernando Masi.

“They are going to be very competitive elections.

In the absence of surveys, a fear is felt in the red referents that I only saw in 2008″, points out Milda Rivarola.

Both recommend the Atlas survey, carried out in Brazil and which gives a technical tie, with almost two points more for Alegre compared to Santiago Peña, a Colorado candidate, former Minister of Finance of the Cartes government and also a former employee of his Banco Basa.

In 2008, the Colorado Party lost control of the Executive branch for the first time in almost 80 years against ex-bishop Fernado Lugo, who won at the head of a coalition of his party, the Guasu Front (center-left), and the Liberal Party (center-left). right).

Lugo's government lasted four of the five years in office before fragmenting and falling into a parliamentary trial promoted by the Colorado Party in 2012 with the support of the Liberal Party itself.

The trial was considered a soft coup by those who suffered it and by the Latin American diplomacy of the time.

“Cartes was the natural consequence of the coup against Lugo, it was the response to all that fear of the US embassy and the business community about the supposed Bolivarian socialism of the Lugo government.

Cartes is the natural consequence of that destruction.

He was behind the impeachment and had already acquired the party to run for office, but the pact was for a mandate”, recalls Rivarola.

Before finishing his five years, Cartes tried to reform the Constitution to be reelected.

Liberals and historic colorados opposed each other in the street.

On March 31, 2017, they burned Congress to prevent it.

Mario Abdo Benítez, son of the private secretary of the dictator Alfredo Stroessner and representative of the high class Colorado lineage that won the internship and the presidency of the country in 2018, emerged strengthened from that. But after five years, Cartes retook control of the party, to the point to impose his candidate in the 2022 internal elections. But something did not go as Cartes expected.

A hope for the opposition

“For them it was unforeseen, the Colorado Party never thought that the US government was going to go this far.

Cartes has a sword of Damocles around his neck.

He can be extradited at any time,” says Rivarola.

The sanctions against the Cartes companies are reflected on a day-to-day basis.

His financial agencies, which dominated the market, can no longer work with companies such as Western Union, where most of the money that the hundreds of thousands of Paraguayan migrants send from abroad to their families arrives.

"If they would be close, even the payment of 150 dollars to apply for a visa to the US was made through a Cartes company," says Masi.

Today, the effect of the sanctions is isolating him.

“Now he is a person with fear and they hit him in the center of his political power, which is money.

There are red referents who are already talking about the risk that Cartes poses for the results, ”adds Rivarola.

The opposition is led by Efraín Alegre, a conservative lawyer, president of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA), former Minister of Public Works of the Lugo government, which he left amid allegations of corruption and against whom he voted in the impeachment trial that brought him down in 2012. Alegre leads the National Concertation, as its alliance is known with other smaller but very active center-right parties and the left represented by a part of the Guasú Front, the Febrerista Party and the National Peasant Federation (FNC).

The candidate Efraín Alegre during a campaign event in Guarambere, on April 4.

NORBERTO DUARTE (AFP)

The Concertación presents the candidacy of Alegre accompanied by Soledad Núñez, former Minister of Housing under Horacio Cartes who was seeking the presidency as an independent.

They are accompanied by hundreds of candidacies of senators and deputies with a long opposition and anti-corruption career, such as the former Minister of Health of Lugo and senator for the Guasú Front, the doctor Esperanza Martínez or the lawyer and deputy of the conservative National Meeting, Kattya Gonzalez.

Masi believes that if a Colorado candidate with no ties to Cartes had won, perhaps the US would have continued to support the party: "I don't know whether to say that it had no choice but to support the Concertación, or if there was already a plan, it depends." of each administration of the US Government. I think there are things that do bother the US, such as money laundering and terrorism, where they have to act no matter how small the country is and Cartes has been linked to both ”.

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