Lessons learned from the 2022 Colorado party primaries

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By José Tomás Sánchez

With the si­mul­ta­ne­ous po­lit­i­cal party pri­maries on De­cem­ber 18, 2022, an im­por­tant step was taken on the road to the gen­eral elec­tions of 2023. In these in­ter­nal elec­tions, the elec­tions held in the Col­orado Party, the Na­tional Con­cer­ta­tion and the Lib­eral Party stood out. In this ar­ti­cle I will high­light some lessons learned from the pri­maries of the Col­orado Party, which pre­sented some 73 thou­sand pre-can­di­da­tures for na­tional, de­part­men­tal and party elec­tive of­fices.

In the first place, the ANR con­tin­ued with its his­tor­i­cal logic of in­ter­nal “re­bel­lion”. The re­sound­ing vic­tory of San­ti­ago Peña (List 2 Movimiento Honor Col­orado) with 618,651 votes (51.6%), against the 526,061 votes (43.9%) of Arnoldo Wiens (List 3 Movimiento Fuerza Re­pub­li­cana) in­di­cates that the par­ti­san trend to fa­vor in­ter­nal op­po­si­tions to the rul­ing party per­sists. Like now, the col­orado ad­ver­sary to the gov­ern­ment of Abdo Benítez won the in­ter­nal elec­tions, in 1992, 1997, 2002 and 2017, the can­di­date elected in the pres­i­den­tial in­ter­nal elec­tions was the ri­val op­tion to the gov­ern­ment in power. In 1992, there was an ex­cep­tion, Luis María Ar­gaña won the in­ter­nal elec­tions, yet Was­mosy was awarded the vic­tory in an ac­knowl­edged case of elec­toral fraud. Only in 2007 the rul­ing party can­di­date Blanca Ove­lar was elected, in an elec­tion in which the con­tender Cas­tiglioni de­nounced fraud. In 2022 the ma­jor­ity ten­dency of elect­ing the op­po­nent of the gov­ern­ment in the in­ter­nal party elec­tions was seen again.

Fig­ure 1 – In­ter­nal elec­tions for the pres­i­dency of the Re­pub­lic (ANR)

Source: Own elab­o­ra­tion with data from TSJE

A sec­ond les­son has to do with the in­ter­nal dy­nam­ics of the ANR. In the elec­tions for the pres­i­dency of the Gov­ern­ing Board, for­mer Pres­i­dent Ho­ra­cio Cartes (50.5%, 605,917 votes) tri­umphed over the cur­rent Pres­i­dent Mario Abdo Benítez (38.1%, 457,302 votes). This re­sult sug­gests a shift in the party.  With the elec­tion of Cartes, we could be see­ing the con­sol­i­da­tion of an in­ter­nal move­ment (in this case the car­tismo) within the party struc­ture, by the hand of an ex-pres­i­dent, some­thing un­usual in the ANR. Es­pe­cially con­sid­er­ing that the mul­ti­ple groups that gath­ered un­der the lead­er­ship of Abdo Benítez or Hugo Velázquez in Fuerza Re­pub­li­cana, could fade away af­ter the re­sult of De­cem­ber 18 and the end of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment. Also re­mark­able was the fact that Abdo had 70 thou­sand votes less than Wiens, which shows the dis­en­gage­ment of Pres­i­dent Abdo even from the rul­ing par­ty’s own move­ment.

Fig­ure 2 – Elec­tions for the pres­i­dency of the Board of Gov­er­nors (ANR)

Source: Own elab­o­ra­tion with data from TSJE

The pre­vi­ous point may in­di­cate that for the first time in democ­racy, within the Col­orado Party, one move­ment pre­dom­i­nates over the oth­ers and that this pre­dom­i­nance lasts. Since the fall of the dic­ta­tor­ship in 1989, the party has been di­vided into in­ter­nal forces that have been con­stantly re­new­ing them­selves. In fact, this di­vi­sion al­ready oc­curred in the sec­ond half of the 1980s, when the so-called “gran­ite unity” that sup­ported Gen­eral Stroess­ner broke down and led to his down­fall. Since then, in­ter­nal fac­tions de­vel­oped in the party which could not dom­i­nate each other, in a dy­namic of “cor­re­la­tion of weak­nesses” in which no move­ment achieved in­ter­nal dom­i­nance. Thus ar­gañismo, was­mo­sismo, oviedismo, nicanorismo, car­tismo and the (more blurred) ab­dismo fol­lowed one an­other. The ri­val­ries of these fac­tions man­i­fested them­selves very strongly, even vi­o­lently in the 1990s, lead­ing to se­ri­ous prob­lems of gov­er­nance. But none of them so­lid­i­fied and no for­mer pres­i­dent re­tained de­ci­sive po­lit­i­cal power once he left the Lopez chair. The for­mer pres­i­dency be­came a sort of po­lit­i­cal “ex­ile”, un­til Cartes came to show the op­po­site in the last in­ter­nal elec­tions. It re­mains to be seen if Carte­sism will in­deed be the lead­ing force of the ANR.

Everything indicates that the elections of 2023 will resemble those of 2018 in that they will be close but will be different from those of 2018 in terms of the degree of polarization, which will probably intensify much more in 2023.

A third point is that “tra­di­tional” pol­i­tics is still strong, with its usual sources of po­lit­i­cal power build­ing. I mean that, at least for now, the in­ter­nal elec­tions with un­blocked lists did not sweep away the lead­er­ships of im­por­tant po­lit­i­cal-par­ti­san tra­jec­tory. Lead­ers such as Sil­vio Beto Ove­lar (152,593 votes), Os­car Ca­chito Sa­lomón (115,722), Juan Car­los Baruja (78,866) and Derlis Os­o­rio (47,355) showed the ef­fec­tive­ness of usual strate­gies such as the ar­tic­u­la­tion with lo­cal lead­ers, the use of party struc­tures, the mo­bi­liza­tion of re­sources, the strate­gic se­lec­tion of ter­ri­to­ries in which to seek votes, as op­posed to dis­cur­sive po­si­tions de­tached from ter­ri­to­r­ial work. This was seen, for ex­am­ple, in the lim­ited ca­pac­ity of can­di­dates who sought to mount their cam­paigns on rad­i­cal, na­tion­al­ist, anti-gen­der and anti-in­ter­na­tional or­ga­ni­za­tions mes­sages (such as the dis­cus­sion against the Na­tional Plan for Ed­u­ca­tional Trans­for­ma­tion). Sev­eral can­di­dates of Honor Col­orado (the group­ing that most in­sisted on this line) who fol­lowed this recipe of po­lit­i­cal con­struc­tion, such as En­rique Ri­era (17,110 votes, #10 in his list) and José Ocam­pos (with 1,281 votes, #36), were left far be­hind with 3% and less than 1% of the votes. The ex­cep­tion was per­haps Lizarella Va­liente, who had 6% of the votes (31,439), but she is as­so­ci­ated with the struc­ture of the mayor of Asun­ción. In sum, the “in­sid­ers” with tra­di­tional re­sources are still in full force in the in­ter­nal pol­i­tics of the Col­orado party.

What do these re­sults tell us about the AN­R’s pro­jec­tions for the April 30 elec­tions? To try and un­der­stand this, we can look at how much the ANR usu­ally grows af­ter its pri­maries on the way to the gen­er­als. Graph 3 shows some in­ter­est­ing points. First, since 2013 the ANR man­ages to ag­gre­gate in the gen­eral elec­tions all the votes from the party in­ter­nals, go­ing far be­yond the ex­clu­sive votes of the win­ner of the pri­maries. Only in 2008 it did not add all the votes from the in­ter­nal elec­tions. On that oc­ca­sion, the ANR lost, be­tween the in­ter­nal and the gen­eral elec­tions, 29% of the votes. It is to be pre­sumed that in those elec­tions the lost vote went to Lino César Oviedo, who founded his party UN­ACE as a de­tach­ment of the Col­orado Party and in the 2008 elec­tions ob­tained 22% of the votes (about 411 thou­sand). The idea that the Lugo-PLRA al­liance won the 2008 elec­tions with the Col­orado vote is true, but be­cause those votes went to Lino Oviedo, al­low­ing Lu­go’s 766 thou­sand votes to be enough to de­feat Blanca Ove­lar’s 573 thou­sand (ANR).

Graph 3 -Evo­lu­tion be­tween in­ter­nal and gen­eral elec­tions since 2008

Source: Own elab­o­ra­tion with data from TSJE and jour­nal­is­tic me­dia.

In 2013, the ANR re­versed the sit­u­a­tion of 2008 and in­creased by 21% the votes be­tween the in­ter­nal and the gen­eral elec­tions, adding 190 thou­sand votes that we could call “ex­tra-party”. With that Ho­ra­cio Cartes (ANR) de­feated Efraín Ale­gre (PLRA-al­lies). The al­liance led by the PLRA had in­creased 91% be­tween its in­ter­nal and the gen­eral elec­tions, adding 423 thou­sand ex­tra-party votes, more than dou­bling the ANR, but in­suf­fi­cient to win the elec­tions. An in­ter­est­ing de­tail is that Lino Oviedo was a can­di­date for those gen­eral elec­tions, he could still take part of the col­orado votes. With his tragic ac­ci­dent months be­fore the elec­tions, in Feb­ru­ary 2013, Oviedo was out of the elec­toral com­pe­ti­tion and pre­sum­ably the bulk of the UN­ACE vote re­turned to the ANR, which would be part of the 21% of the ex­tra-party votes in the gen­eral elec­tions.

In 2018 the ANR in­creased only 8% be­tween the in­ter­nal and the gen­eral elec­tions, about 86 thou­sand votes. Once again, it was enough for Mario Abdo Benítez (ANR) with about 1,206,000 votes to de­feat Efraín Ale­gre (PLRA-al­lies), who ob­tained 1,110,000 votes, adding 606 thou­sand ex­tra-party votes, 7 times more than the ANR. The drop in the AN­R’s ex­tra-party votes be­tween 2013 and 2018 may be due to sev­eral fac­tors. The UN­ACE voter had al­ready been ab­sorbed by the ANR and did not add ex­tra-party votes in 2018, or Mario Abdo Benítez had less in­flu­ence out­side the party com­pared to Cartes.

The data from the in­ter­nal elec­tions and the num­bers of ex­tra-party votes that the ANR ob­tained in the last gen­eral elec­tions of 2018 leave sev­eral ques­tion marks for the gen­eral elec­tions of 2023. The par­ty’s elec­toral floor will likely be high and will again ag­gre­gate all the vote from the pri­maries (i.e., the ANR al­ready has at least 1,199,050 votes). The ceil­ing is more un­cer­tain: will the ex­tra-party ag­gre­gate re­sem­ble the 21% of Cartes or the 8% of Mario Abdo? Peña has a pro­file more like Cartes, al­though there are no more UN­ACE vot­ers to ab­sorb. The Con­certación, on the other hand, fur­ther ex­panded the pre­vi­ous PLRA al­liance, and it re­mains to be seen what place Eu­clides Acevedo and Payo Cubas will have in April (will they ab­sorb more ANR or Con­certación votes?). It also re­mains to be seen if the un­block­ing of the lists for the leg­isla­tive can­di­da­cies will at­tract more votes to the ANR, or if there will be a crossover vote. Every­thing in­di­cates that the elec­tions of 2023 will re­sem­ble those of 2018 in that they will be close but will be dif­fer­ent from those of 2018 in terms of the de­gree of po­lar­iza­tion, which will prob­a­bly in­ten­sify much more in 2023.

Cover im­age: Santi Peña Press