Santiago Peña: neither an outsider nor free of conditioning in the Colorado Party

Escuchar la entrada

By Gus­tavo Setrini.*

The slo­gan of the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign has been “change”. The Na­tional Con­cer­ta­tion af­firms that Efraín Ale­gre and Soledad Núñez are “the only pos­si­ble change”. The ANR tells us that with San­ti­ago Peña and Pe­dro Al­liana “we will be bet­ter off”. The pal­pa­ble de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the se­cu­rity and qual­ity of life of most Paraguayans has worn down the le­git­i­macy of our po­lit­i­cal au­thor­i­ties and the po­lit­i­cal model of the tra­di­tional par­ties. The sit­u­a­tion de­mands that can­di­dates avoid ap­pear­ing to be “more of the same”.

In this con­text, par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis has been placed on San­ti­ago Peña’s sup­posed sta­tus as an “out­sider” or neo­phyte in elec­toral pol­i­tics. His sup­port­ers point to his aca­d­e­mic cre­den­tials as ev­i­dence of his tech­ni­cal sol­vency, while his op­po­nents ques­tion his party loy­alty and his lack of mil­i­tant and po­lit­i­cal man­age­ment ex­pe­ri­ence. How­ever, the terms “out­sider” or “neo­phyte” are some­what eu­phemistic as a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the Col­orado can­di­date. Can the po­lit­i­cal fig­ure of San­ti­ago Peña be qual­i­fied as an “out­sider”?

To con­sider a politi­cian as an “out­sider” would mean that he has ac­cu­mu­lated his le­git­i­macy and po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal in a field other than elec­toral pol­i­tics and has used that le­git­i­macy to en­ter rel­a­tively in­de­pen­dently into the elec­toral dis­pute. For ex­am­ple, the fig­ure of Fer­nando Lugo, who gained his po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal as a Bishop within the Catholic Church and then en­tered elec­toral pol­i­tics from an al­liance, but with­out be­ing part of a po­lit­i­cal party, could be more pre­cisely qual­i­fied as an “out­sider”. His abil­ity to mo­bi­lize votes orig­i­nated out­side elec­toral pol­i­tics and po­lit­i­cal par­ties and this sta­tus even ex­plained some char­ac­ter­is­tics, both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive, of his pres­i­den­tial ad­min­is­tra­tion.

a possible Peña administration will have little or no fiscal space to address these urgencies of the general population. This makes it likely that the government will face a scenario of growing frustration and social mobilization, to which it could respond with a combination of clientelist co-optation of sectors sympathetic to the party and political repression of opponents. As president, Santiago Peña, far from representing a change, would be forced to give continuity to the same political model that has trapped the country for decades.

Un­like Lugo, San­ti­ago Peña’s abil­ity to mo­bi­lize votes is re­lated to two fac­tors: his close ties with Ho­ra­cio Cartes (first as his ap­pointed Fi­nance Min­is­ter and then as an ex­ec­u­tive in Banco Basa) and his sta­tus as the elected can­di­date in the Col­orado Par­ty’s in­ter­nal elec­tions.

Peña’s aca­d­e­mic and tech­ni­cal back­ground is of­ten re­marked upon. While a cre­den­tial such as his mas­ter’s de­gree in pub­lic pol­icy from a re­spected pro­gram in the United States dis­tin­guishes him from can­di­dates who gain ac­cess to po­si­tions in pub­lic of­fice thanks to long elec­toral ca­reers within the ANR. With­out suit­able cre­den­tials, it can­not be said that San­ti­ago Peña ac­cu­mu­lated his po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal through his promi­nence in acad­e­mia or in the field of pub­lic pol­icy or pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion, which are fields that in any case have lit­tle weight so far in the Paraguayan po­lit­i­cal dis­pute.

In this sense, to win votes, San­ti­ago Peña will have to rely on two as­sets: the mo­bi­liza­tion ca­pac­ity of the ANR elec­toral ma­chin­ery with its caudil­los and lead­ers through­out the coun­try, as well as the fi­nanc­ing and po­lit­i­cal back­ing of Ho­ra­cio Cartes, cur­rently un­der siege by the US em­bassy sanc­tions.

Con­trary to be­ing an out­sider, Peña is im­pris­oned to the dy­nam­ics of the Col­orado Party. If he wins the elec­tions, San­ti­ago Peña will have to deal with in­ter­nal op­po­si­tion from the tra­di­tion­al­ist fac­tion of the Col­orado Party, cur­rently led by Mario Abdo Benítez, both within the Leg­isla­tive Branch and within the party it­self. The two fac­tions rep­re­sent not only two sides in dis­pute, but two dif­fer­ent vi­sions of the fu­ture of the party and its re­la­tion­ship with so­ci­ety and the State. In San­ti­ago Peña’s re­cent speeches, one notes an ef­fort to vin­di­cate the pop­ulism and clien­telism that tra­di­tion­ally mo­bi­lizes the par­ty’s base.  How­ever, Peña does not owe his place to pop­u­lar sup­port, but to his ties with the busi­ness and eco­nomic elite, for whom clien­telism and pop­ulism rep­re­sent bar­ri­ers to busi­ness po­lit­i­cal hege­mony.

Notwith­stand­ing the at­tempt to unify the party be­hind his fig­ure, it can be an­tic­i­pated that an even­tual Peña ad­min­is­tra­tion will have lit­tle party dis­ci­pline in Con­gress. He will face a great chal­lenge to strengthen the le­git­i­macy of his lead­er­ship in front of his own party. In ad­di­tion, he will have to gain le­git­i­macy in the eyes of the pop­u­la­tion in gen­eral, which means that he will have to face a con­text of de­te­ri­o­rat­ing liv­ing con­di­tions caused by the COVID 19 pan­demic, ac­cel­er­ated in­fla­tion and sig­nif­i­cant deficits in ar­eas such as health, ed­u­ca­tion, trans­porta­tion, so­cial se­cu­rity, and de­vel­op­ment of in­dus­trial and ser­vice sec­tors with higher added value, which will gen­er­ate higher qual­ity em­ploy­ment.

Con­sid­er­ing that a tax in­crease will be ve­toed by the busi­ness sec­tor close to the can­di­date, a pos­si­ble Peña ad­min­is­tra­tion will have lit­tle or no fis­cal space to ad­dress these ur­gen­cies of the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion. This makes it likely that the gov­ern­ment will face a sce­nario of grow­ing frus­tra­tion and so­cial mo­bi­liza­tion, to which it could re­spond with a com­bi­na­tion of clien­telist co-op­ta­tion of sec­tors sym­pa­thetic to the party and po­lit­i­cal re­pres­sion of op­po­nents. As pres­i­dent, San­ti­ago Peña, far from rep­re­sent­ing a change, would be forced to give con­ti­nu­ity to the same po­lit­i­cal model that has trapped the coun­try for decades.

* PhD in Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence from the Mass­a­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy (USA).

Im­age source: ABC Color