Santiago Peña, a technocrat for continuity

On October 29, 2016, Santiago Peña left the Liberal Party and joined the Colorado Party.

He was 37 years old and was already Minister of Finance, the youngest in the country's history, in the Government of Horacio Cartes.

The photo of the president placing the red party scarf around Peña's neck forever sealed the fate of this US-trained economist and former International Monetary Fund official.

Almost seven years later, Peña is Cartes's candidate in the presidential elections on Sunday, April 30 in Paraguay.

The former president of Colorado exalted him, but now he is also his ballast.

Since the United States sanctioned Cartes for money laundering, Peña has juggled to convince the electorate, especially the youngest, that he is an honest man who represents change.

“People who are affected by these sanctions have the right and should also have the obligation to defend themselves.

It is what Cartes has said, that he denies the accusations,” Peña said this week in an interview with EL PAÍS.

In these elections, he must deal with the idea that, if he wins, he will be a puppet of the former president, one of the richest men in the country and today the winner of the internal one that pitted him against the current head of state, Mario Abdo Benítez, for control of the Colorado Party.

Peña is known to be a technocrat with no political experience, but he appeals to his youth to convince Paraguayans that he is capable of renewing a movement that has been in power for more than 70 years.

In the last stage of his campaign, however, his discourse veered towards more traditional strategies: he promised public work in exchange for votes.

Pena has lived fast.

He was born in Asunción in 1978 into a high-class family.

At the age of 17, he fathered the first of his two children with Leticia Ocampo, his current wife.

He was still in high school.

When he was barely 30 years old, the IMF summoned him to work in Washington.

Upon his return to Paraguay, he joined the board of the Central Bank, was Minister of Finance and later director of a bank owned by Cartes.

In 2018 he tried a candidacy, but lost to Abdo Benítez in the party primaries.

He often says that the Colorado Party survives the passage of time because "it knows how to reflect the different moments in Paraguayan history."

“I am also sure that it will be the party that adapts to future changes.

I am proof of that generational change.

Somehow, I reflect a modern vision of Paraguay”, he says.

In this delicate balance between past and future, a political career is at stake.

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