Efraín Alegre, the triumph of persistence

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By Mar­cos Pérez Talia

Last Sun­day, De­cem­ber 18, the elec­tions of the op­po­si­tion, or Con­certación, were held with an open elec­toral roll. It was an un­prece­dented event in the Paraguayan de­mo­c­ra­tic his­tory since any voter, re­gard­less of his af­fil­i­a­tion, could vote for the dif­fer­ent for­mu­las for the Ex­ec­u­tive power. A cou­ple of hours af­ter the clos­ing of the elec­tion, the am­ple tri­umph of the Efrain Ale­gre and Soledad Nuñez for­mula was con­firmed. A tire­less agenda added to a se­ries of cru­cial events con­sol­i­dated Ale­gre’s va­lid­ity and led him to po­si­tion him­self, for the third time, as the main op­po­si­tion pres­i­den­tial can­di­date.

Efraín was pres­i­den­tial can­di­date twice be­fore, in 2013 and 2018. In the first one, he was de­feated by Cartes, by a dif­fer­ence of eight points. The breakup of the suc­cess­ful Pa­tri­otic Al­liance for Change, af­ter the im­peach­ment of Lugo in 2012, was de­ci­sive for the col­orado tri­umph. In 2018 Ale­gre man­aged to re­com­pose the al­liance for­mula with the left, and ac­com­pa­nied by Leo Rubín, was again de­feated by Mario Abdo by 3%, the small­est mar­gin of the de­mo­c­ra­tic era. How­ever, the (lit­tle) trans­parency of those elec­tions and the col­lu­sion of the me­dia that flooded the cam­paign with grossly false polls left more doubts than cer­tain­ties. His sec­ond pres­i­den­tial de­feat, in a far from trans­par­ent elec­toral process, far from bury­ing Ale­gre’s po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, re­vi­tal­ized it.

A year af­ter Mario Abdo took of­fice as pres­i­dent, a scan­dal arose that al­most cost him the Pres­i­dency. His gov­ern­ment ne­go­ti­ated a se­cret agree­ment with Brazil that was detri­men­tal to Paraguayan in­ter­ests in the Itaipu hy­dro­elec­tric power plant. As soon as this was known, an im­peach­ment trial be­gan, ini­tially with the sup­port of the Cartista con­gress (which en­sured the votes for the pres­i­den­tial im­peach­ment), al­though in ex­tremis it was saved by the leader of the fac­tion, Ho­ra­cio Cartes. Ale­gre’s main agenda at the time was en­ergy pol­icy, and this scan­dal placed him at the cen­ter of the po­lit­i­cal storm. Ac­cord­ing to a lower house mem­ber, his fac­tion pre­vented the im­peach­ment trial, not to save Mario Abdo, but be­cause if new elec­tions were held (due to the pres­i­den­tial acephaly) Efraín Ale­gre would win.

In Jan­u­ary 2021, in the mid­dle of the pan­demic and still with­out vac­cines, the jus­tice sys­tem or­dered the im­pris­on­ment of Efraín Ale­gre. It was a court case as ab­surd as it was il­le­gal, a prod­uct of the ac­count­abil­ity of the 2018 po­lit­i­cal cam­paign. In the face of the im­mense crit­i­cism of op­po­si­tion lead­ers and some me­dia, jus­tice or­dered his re­lease weeks later, al­though the ju­di­cial process con­tin­ues its cause. His im­pris­on­ment reval­ued the mean­ing of his strug­gle, strength­en­ing his cause. In a way, it val­i­dated his story that there is a coun­try co-opted by the mafia, which sub­ju­gated its in­sti­tu­tions, and that fiercely pun­ishes those who op­pose it.

A few months later, in June 2021, the PLRA was go­ing through pri­maries to elect party au­thor­i­ties. Ale­gre chose to seek the re­elec­tion, and his main ri­val was Salyn Buzar­quis, who nar­rowed a broad anti-Efrain­ist al­liance that in­cluded al­most all the Lib­eral par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, plus the llanismo and the team of Víc­tor Ríos. De­spite the elec­toral strength of his con­tender, Efrain man­aged to be re­elected pres­i­dent of the party. With this, he took an­other huge step to­wards 2023, with the sup­port of his loyal Lib­eral elec­torate.

Ale­gre’s next chal­lenge was to cre­ate a space for the con­ver­gence of most of the op­po­si­tion. He pro­posed the use of the fig­ure of the Con­certación, which had not been used un­til then. The con­ven­tion of his party ap­proved, and, at the same time, he started ne­go­ti­a­tions with the op­po­si­tion forces to join the space. In June the dif­fer­ent forces -in­clud­ing the Frente Guasú- signed the Con­certación agree­ment.

To en­sure in­cen­tives for the other forces to dis­pute the Con­certación’s in­ter­nal elec­tions, he pro­moted the use of the na­tional elec­toral roll so that all vot­ers (whether or not they were af­fil­i­ated to a party) could vote. De­spite the fact that his ad­ver­saries pointed out that it was not con­ve­nient for Efraín to leave the mar­gins of the lib­eral elec­toral roll (due to its sup­posed ero­sion in the in­de­pen­dent elec­torate), he cam­paigned with the new min­is­ters of the TSJE for its ap­proval, which fi­nally hap­pened and was cel­e­brated with en­thu­si­asm.

It seems very clear that Efraín Alegre’s leadership is in full growth. His electoral numbers are increasing in each election, process after process

Al­though Ale­gre was re­elected pres­i­dent of the PLRA, the mar­gin with which he won -34%- did not as­sure him an easy vic­tory against the other op­po­si­tion for­mu­las. He then be­gan a process of in­ter­nal re­or­ga­ni­za­tion to im­prove his cor­re­la­tion of forces. In a short time, he ob­tained the sup­port for the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions of his for­mer ri­vals such as Salyn Buzar­quis (his op­po­nent in the in­ter­nal party elec­tions of 2016 and 2021), Paková Ledesma, Alejo Ríos (gov­er­nor of Caaguazú), the po­lit­i­cal team of Víc­tor Ríos (to­day in the Supreme Court), and mul­ti­ple may­ors, coun­cilors and lower house con­gress­men who pre­vi­ously be­longed to the move­ment of Dion­i­sio Amar­illa. In ad­di­tion, out­side the strictly lib­eral vote, he reached an agree­ment for the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign with Soledad Núñez and the Alianza En­cuen­tro Na­cional. In ad­di­tion, he ob­tained the sup­port of Miguel Pri­eto and all his po­lit­i­cal team in Alto Paraná.

These dif­fer­ent events and the suc­cess­ful in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal ar­tic­u­la­tion car­ried out up to this point once again bore fruit. Thus, Efraín Ale­gre eas­ily won in the Con­certación with 59.2% of the votes, against Hugo Fleitas with 17%, Martín Burt with 12.5% and Se­bastián Vil­larejo with 4.7%.

Fig­ure I. Num­ber of votes of the main pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates of the Con­certación (2022)

Source: https://​re­sul­ta­dos.tsje.gov.py/​pub­li­ca­cion/​di­vul­ga­cion.html

The above graph shows the im­por­tant dif­fer­ence in votes be­tween the main can­di­dates that com­peted for the pres­i­dency. The use of the na­tional elec­toral roll -and not only the lib­eral one- was not a prob­lem for Ale­gre to win very com­fort­ably against the dif­fer­ent op­pos­ing ex­pres­sions. The ar­rival of the in­de­pen­dent vote to the in­ter­nal elec­tion, far from gen­er­at­ing un­cer­tainty, con­sol­i­dated his chances, fa­vored, in ad­di­tion, by his al­liance with Soledad Núñez.

It seems very clear that Efraín Ale­gre’s lead­er­ship is in full growth. His elec­toral num­bers are in­creas­ing in each elec­tion, process af­ter process, as shown in the fol­low­ing table:

Table I. Votes ob­tained by Efraín Ale­gre in the dif­fer­ent elec­tions (2013 to 2022)

Source: Sta­tis­ti­cal data ob­tained from PLRA and TSJE.

His elec­toral base is grow­ing, as shown in the table above. For these 2023 gen­eral elec­tions, his can­di­dacy will be sup­ported by Soledad Núñez and the Con­certación in gen­eral, which seems to be a cru­cial key for a pos­si­ble al­ter­na­tion in 2023.

Cover im­age: Efraín Ale­gre’s so­cial net­works