By Marcos Pérez Talia.
Paraguay is on the way to its eighth presidential election since the fall of General Stroessner’s dictatorship. Of the seven previous elections, the Colorado Party triumphed in six. If we observe the course of both coloradismo and the opposition, we see that the dynamics changed. In some cases the ANR presented itself with a cohesive republican embrace, and in other cases with internal crises. The same for the opposition, where in some elections there was a greater unification, while in others there was a certain fragmentation. The purpose of this article is to emphasize the different ways in which both the ruling party and the opposition articulated themselves, in order to be in tune with the current situation and to speculate on possible scenarios.
If we explore the last four presidential elections we can observe the different dynamics of each political space. In the following table is a summary of this.
Table 1. Partisan dynamics in the last four presidential elections
|
|
ANR | Opposition |
Result |
|
2003 |
No internal crisis | Divided into two main fronts: PLRA and Patria Querida. Oviedo also presented himself for the first time outside the ANR. |
ANR triumph |
|
2008 |
Strong internal crisis (alleged fraud against Castiglioni in the primaries) | A part of the APC (Lugo and the PLRA). In addition, Patria Querida and Lino Oviedo presented themselves outside the Alliance. |
Opposition triumph |
|
2013 |
No internal crisis | The PLRA and progressivism were divided in 3 formulas |
ANR Triumph |
|
2018 |
No internal crisis | Unified opposition |
ANR Triumph |
The ANR successfully resolved its internal processes for the general elections of 2003, 2013 and 2018. In all cases, the winners and losers merged in a republican embrace, a fundamental tradition in the coloradismo to maintain power. On the other hand, in 2008, the wounds were not healed in time as a result of the fraud complaints filed by Luis Castiglioni, presidential candidate defeated by Blanca Ovelar.
unlike 2003 and 2013, and even 2018, the current news is the internal and external crisis that coloradismo is going through. Therefore, if the scenarios have the capacity to be reproduced again, 2023 could be more similar to 2008 (lack of total unity in the opposition, but with a colorado crisis) than to the other three elections. Added to this, there are formulas that may eventually capture dissident colorado votes, such as Euclides Acevedo himself, former chancellor of Mario Abdo, or even Payo Cubas, with the capacity to mobilize out of spite votes
For its part, the opposition competed against the ANR in different modalities. In 2018 was the scenario of greater cohesion, where almost all forces supported the presidential pair of Efraín Alegre and Leo Rubín. At that time, the Hagamos party, Patria Querida and Cruzada Nacional led by Payo Cubas, parties that did not present presidential candidacies but only parliamentary candidacies, were left out of the GANAR Alliance.
The 2003 and 2013 elections were the ones with the greatest opposition dispersion. In 2003, Yoyito Franco of the PLRA and Pedro Fadul of Patria Querida did not reach an electoral agreement to face together the colorado candidate Nicanor Duarte Frutos. The ANR obtained only a meager 37% (the lowest result of coloradismo in the democratic era), thanks to the division of the opposition. Same scenario in 2013, where the three main formulas (Efraín Alegre, Mario Ferreiro and Aníbal Carrillo) together had more votes than Horacio Cartes, who ended up winning as a result of the breakdown of the successful alliance of 2008 after the impeachment of Lugo.
The only opposition triumph occurred in 2008, where the opposition did not compete as a block (Pedro Fadul and Lino Oviedo ran on the outside) but Lugo and Federico won 40.9% of the votes, mainly thanks to the internal colorado crisis, whose votes were successfully captured by Lino Oviedo. Paradoxically, it is still frequent to read analyses suggesting that Lugo triumphed with colorado votes. Surely he may have captured some, but a fundamental part of his triumph was due to the dispersion of the colorados towards Lino Oviedo, after the internal crisis between Castiglioni and Duarte Frutos.
Table 2. Main results of the last four presidential elections
|
2003 |
2008 | 2013 |
2018 |
||||
|
ANR |
37% | ANR | 31% | ANR | 46% | ANR |
46% |
|
PLRA |
24% | Lugo/PLRA | 41% | PY Alegre Alliance | 37% | GANAR Alliance |
43% |
|
PQ |
21% | UNACE | 22% | Avanza País |
6% |
||
|
UNACE |
13% | PQ | 2% | Frente Guazú |
3% |
||
|
|
Patria Querida |
1% |
|||||
This summary suggests that the internal colorado dynamics is a crucial variable to understand the presidential results. Looking at the last four elections, regardless of how the opposition presented itself (with some cohesion), it was the existence or absence of a colorado crisis that explained its triumph or defeat. But, in addition, with an extra spice: the need for the existence of a third option -closer to the ANR and far from the PLRA- capable of attracting those “dissatisfied” colorado votes.
If we focus on the current scenario of 2023, we can observe the existence of a double colorado crisis, one internal and the other external. The internal crisis is not as serious as that of 2008, although the dialectic disputes between President Mario Abdo and the Cartismo are latent. Very illustrative was Abdo Benítez’s phrase with which he referred to Santiago Peña: “what we have is ugly, but it is worse to have nothing“. Needless to say that his paraphrase to the late Blas N. Riquelme generated a furious reaction from the Cartists. At another time, President Abdo Benítez went so far as to publicly reproach Peña’s proposal for privatization of health care. But the most heated -so far- was when President Abdo expressed that “we do not have to be afraid of alternation“.
Parallel to this internal crisis there is another problem for the ANR: the financial sanctions of the United States against President Horacio Cartes. The situation made it impossible for the ANR -at least until now- to access loans to finance the electoral campaign. The influential colorado senator Lilian Samaniego indicated that she will suggest the resignation of Cartes as president of the party since “this crisis… is putting at risk the great challenge that the party has next April 30“. Lilian Samaniego herself mentioned the crisis and, again, as expected, she received furious responses from Cartes referents such as Bachi Núñez and Calé Galaverna. The proposal that Cartes should leave the presidency was also raised by other colorado referents of Abdo Benítez’s team such as Dani Centurión and Hugo Ramírez.
In 2008, coloradismo had an erroneous reading of the situation when they opted to quickly exonerate Oviedo for the coup attempt of 1996, looking for him to compete and thus divide the opposition. On the other hand, after the internal crisis of 2007, part of those “angry” votes went to the candidacy of Lino Oviedo. It was enough for the opposition to keep its historical vote (that of 1998, or the sum of the 2003 dispersion between PLRA and PQ) to gain access to the presidency.
For these elections of 2023, the cartismo is eagerly seeking to avoid a polarization scenario -like the one of 2018- believing that this could be the key to an eventual triumph. Santiago Peña avoided a debate with Efraín Alegre, and expressly argued that they seek “not to polarize the contest only between him and the candidate of the Concertación, Efraín Alegre. He assures that the candidates Euclides Acevedo and Paraguayo “Payo” Cubas should be included in the exposition and not be ‘ignored’…”.
Its strategy is to resemble the elections of 2023 to those of 2003 or 2013, where the fragmentation of the electoral offer favored the ANR (cohesive) and divided the opposition vote. But, as mentioned above, unlike 2003 and 2013, and even 2018, the current news is the internal and external crisis that coloradismo is going through. Therefore, if the scenarios have the capacity to be reproduced again, 2023 could be more similar to 2008 (lack of total unity in the opposition, but with a colorado crisis) than to the other three elections. Added to this, there are formulas that may eventually capture dissident colorado votes, such as Euclides Acevedo himself, former chancellor of Mario Abdo, or even Payo Cubas, with the capacity to mobilize out of spite votes.
The elections are just over a month away and the electoral outcome is becoming imminent. We will soon know which of the previous elections 2023 this one will most resemble.
Cover image: Nea Hoy