By Marcos Pérez Talia
It even seems obvious to say that the Paraguayan opposition needs to unite to defeat the Colorado Party. Everything seems to indicate that this total unity will take place under the legal framework of the National Concertation. But to get this far, a lot of water has and will continue to run under the bridge. This article proposes a brief glance at the last elections and shows some statistical data that suggest the “imperative need” to concretize the opposition unity as a vehicle that will feed the triumph in 2023. Either the opposition unites to win, or it will sink separately.
The Paraguayan opposition, as far as the presidential elections are concerned, has had different strategies since the establishment of democracy. In a previous article, I have stated that since the 1989 presidential elections, the aliancista spirit seems to have consolidated as democracy was established. Although there were also important setbacks, such as the breakup of the government of the Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC) in 2012, after having been the most successful electoral experience of the opposition in the political history of the country.
For a matter of space, I will explore the data of the last two presidential elections (2013 and 2018). In both, the ANR displayed unity, not only internally through “republican embrace”, but also from the outside, in the sense that after the death of Lino Oviedo, the strength of UNACE returned to the Colorado Party. This characteristic of convergence towards unity can be assumed to be repeated in 2023, although the internal dispute of the ANR shows signs that suggest otherwise. Let us not forget that this “fight” in the primaries of the ANR seems to be a children’s quarrel compared to the 90’s and, in general (except for the period of UNACE’s exit in the 2000’s), the unity of the ANR has been maintained.
Let’s go further into the details of the last elections. In 2013, the breakup of the APC was key for the return of coloradismo to the government, as shown in the following table.
Table 1. Main results of the 2013 presidential election 
Source: own elaboration based on TSJE data. Online access: https://tsje.gov.py/e2013/resultados-elecciones-2013.html
The sum of votes received by the candidates of the parties that formed the APC, such as Efraín Alegre (889,451), Mario Ferreiro (141,716) and Aníbal Carrillo (79,573) was slightly higher than the votes obtained by Horacio Cartes, but higher, nonetheless. This mathematical exercise, although it does not always occur, can also prove a point. If the forces that made up the APC had allied, together, they could have had 1,110,740 votes and defeated the 1,104,169 votes of the Colorado Party. That shows that the breakup of the APC was a ruinous business for the Paraguayan opposition that governed between 2008 and 2013. Keeping the “united team” would have been a guarantee of success despite the economic power of Cartes and the, so to say, “good profile” that the tobacco tycoon showed at that time.
The colorados are aware of the importance of the internal dispute to generate electoral muscle for the presidential elections. The opposition is in this learning curve. In addition, the candidacies of new players and profiles generate hope and enthusiasm in sectors that conventionally did not feel attracted by the traditional political spaces. With the electoral power of the PLRA and the inclusive sum of the other opposition parties, the Concertation can present a competitive formula and aspire to a new alternation. But the key is unity.
For the 2018 elections, the former allies learned their lesson, forgot their old animosities from the previous period and once again entered an electoral alliance for the Executive Power. But despite the opposition unity for the presidential formula, they did not have enough votes to defeat the ANR. Mario Abdo Benítez obtained 1,206,067 votes and triumphed against the 1,110,464 votes of Efraín Alegre (Alianza GANAR). The difference, minimal in electoral history, was around 3%. It is worth mentioning that PLRA, Frente Guasu, Partido Democrático Progresista (PDP) and Avanza País (AP), among others, were part of the GANAR Alliance.
Table 2. Main results of the 2018 presidential election
Source: own based on TSJE data. Online access: https://www.tsje.gov.py/elecciones-generales-2018.html
Besides the embarrassment of the fraudulent polls and the scandal in the TSJE for the alleged change of votes in favor of the ANR, the numbers in the legislative elections may explain, in part, the presidential results.
If we consider, only for analytical purposes, that the Senate vote is the one that most resembles the “hard vote” of the parties and that these tend to be transferred to the Executive formula, we see in Table 3 that the opposition political chessboard of 2018 had other substantial actors that were not part of the GANAR Alliance: Patria Querida, Hagamos and Cruzada Nacional (UNACE can be considered a vote close to the ANR). And that this separate transit could explain the failure of the opposition at the presidential level.
Table 3. Senate election results in 2018 (data of parties that won seats)
Source: own based on TSJE data. Online access: https://www.tsje.gov.py/elecciones-generales-2018.html
Efraín Alegre and Leo Rubín obtained 1,110,464 votes (42.7%) and the sum of votes in the Senate list of their main allies (PLRA + FG + PDP) was 935,429. The difference was 175,035 votes. At the same time, the ANR added 1,206,067 in the presidential elections, but only 766,841 in the Senate, with a difference in favor of Mario Abdo of 439,226. That is to say, the ANR added, from the opposition political forces in the Senate, almost three times more than what Efraín Alegre and Leo Rubín added.
The ANR thus showed an unusual capacity to attract the opposition vote, or at least outside the “hard vote”. Another way of looking at it is through the strength of its internal elections. The numbers suggest that for the general elections for the presidency (1,206,067 votes), the ANR only needed to add 7% to more than all the vote accumulated in its internal elections (1,119,278 votes). Added to the analysis of the Senate, this indicates that, on the one hand, there is a part of the vote of the colorado internal elections for the presidential candidates that is not transferred to the colorado list in the Senate (which was 766,841 votes), but also shows that these votes that perhaps leak to other political forces in the Senate, continue adding to the presidential candidate for the ANR, and that this candidate also manages to attract more votes from outside the party.
The ANR manages a very high electoral floor (we can say that the 766,841 votes in the Senate constitute that floor), but it still requires part of that “soft vote”, that is, the one that is capable of voting for opposition forces in the Senate.
With that scenario, the opposition cannot afford to “waste” votes from opposition parties such as Patria Querida (PQ) and Cruzada Nacional (CN), for example. In 2018, both accounted for almost 220,000 votes for the Senate and did not campaign for the presidential formula Alegre-Rubín of the Alianza GANAR. Mario Abdo won by only 95,000 votes, so the votes obtained by PQ and CN could have been defining.
Fortunately for the Paraguayan opposition, it seems that the parties learned the lesson from the previous process and are on the way to widen the bases of the 2023 project. Last April, representatives of several opposition parties signed a pre-agreement to form an alliance under the figure of the Concertation, although for the time being the alliance project only contemplates the Executive Power. It was signed by the PLRA, PEN, PDP, PRF, etc. and with the twist, unlike in the past elections, of adding Patria Querida, Cruzada Nacional and Hagamos. Of course, the incorporation of the progressive bloc is missing, although its candidate Esperanza Martinez acknowledged that they intend to join the Concertation.
This unity is not only important because of a mere arithmetic sum of parties and movements, but also because of the emergence of new leaderships that attract different segments of society. Unlike previous electoral processes, in the current offer of the Concertation there are profiles that mobilize middle sectors such as Sebastián Villarejo, Soledad Núñez or Martín Burt; dissenting and protesting sectors such as Payo Cubas, or even broader sectors such as Kattya González. To these the leadership of Efraín Alegre should be added, who is aiming at a third presidential candidacy.
The Concertation is taking shape and appears to be an important vehicle for 2023. Never in the history of presidential elections at the national level, the opposition has competed internally to select its pair. This introduces new elements, such as the capacity to mobilize, motivate and then hook various sectors around the winning team. The colorados are aware of the importance of the internal dispute to generate electoral muscle for the presidential elections. The opposition is in this learning curve. In addition, the candidacies of new players and profiles generate hope and enthusiasm in sectors that conventionally did not feel attracted by the traditional political spaces. With the electoral power of the PLRA and the inclusive sum of the other opposition parties, the Concertation can present a competitive formula and aspire to a new alternation. But the key is unity.
Cover image: Myrian González