With his victory over Efraín Alegre in the elections this Sunday, Santiago Peña
will become the eighth president
since the return of democracy in Paraguay.
A 44-year-old economist considered a "dolphin" of former President Horacio Cartes, Peña will be in charge of succeeding the current president, Mario Abdo Benítez, and extending the dominance of the Colorado Party in Paraguayan politics.
Peña
became a father for the first time at age 17
with his current wife, Leticia Ocampo, whom he married after turning 19. He currently has two children, ages 26 and 17.
Last February, Peña starred in a small scandal when he stated in a presentation of his candidacy that Argentines
"don't want to work."
"There are many people who also do not want to work. Our neighbors here in Argentina, they do not want to work. It is a reality and it is wrong, we do not have to get to that," he shot, a statement that even provoked the response of the Argentine ambassador in Paraguayan.
In a later interview with Forbes, Peña clarified that the culture of work had been lost in Argentina,
"not because of the citizens
, but because the system forced him to do so."
Santiago Peña's mother is Argentine, and the candidate has two brothers who were born in Argentina.
the internal
Peña obtained the Colorado Party candidacy last December by defeating Arnoldo Wiens,
the candidate supported by Benítez in the ANR internal party.
Due to fierce party fighting, coupled with corruption allegations against his mentor, Peña faced much of the campaign alone.
Peña's political career began in 2015, when he took office
as Minister of Economy in the government of Horacio Cartes.
"At the age of 35 I became Minister of Finance, head of the economic team, president of the council of public companies," Peña recalled in an interview with EFE.
Santiago Peña and his wife in Asunción.
AFP photo
Prior to that, he had been part of the Africa department of the International Monetary Fund and later president of the Central Bank of Paraguay.
A graduate of the Universidad Católica Nuestra Señora de Asunción
, he did a postgraduate degree in Public Policy at Columbia University before joining the IMF.
Peña only joined the Colorado Party in 2016,
after resigning from the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA)
, and in 2017 he ran for the ANR inmates.
At that time, he lost to the man who would later become president of Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benítez.
In recent years, Peña has been part of the board of directors of Banco Basa, whose main shareholder is Sara Cartes Jara, the former president's sister.
With a clearly technical profile, Peña has always presented himself as the renewal of the Colorado Party, and he will be the youngest president since the return of democracy in Paraguay.
One of the questions that he will have to answer is what he is going to do
regarding the position of Horacio Cartes
.
Consulted in the days before the election regarding what he would do if the United States sought to extradite Cartes, Peña affirmed that he would not interfere in what Justice decides.
However, after the resounding victory, the question that arises is whether this means that Cartes will be able to maintain his centrality in Paraguayan politics.
Assumption. Special delivery
look too
Paraguay: with more than 90% scrutinized, the trend is irreversible and the official Santiago Peña, the new president, has already spoken with Alberto Fernández
Clarín in Paraguay: the relationship with Taiwan generates friction with China and sneaks into the electoral campaign
