Does 2023 look more like 2003, 2008, 2013 or 2018?

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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