The Colorado Party: a power of divided forces

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By Fer­nando Martínez Es­co­bar.

The elec­toral strength ob­tained by the Col­orado Party (ANR) in the elec­tions of April 30 has re­vived the idea of the uni­fi­ca­tion of the ANR in the gov­ern­ment, but the idea of party unity is a myth that has been around for al­most 40 years. Al­fredo Stroess­ner’s regime had party unity as one of the bases on which it sus­tained its per­ma­nence, but that unity be­gan to crack af­ter the 1984 Col­orado con­ven­tion; it reached the point of no re­turn in the 1987 con­ven­tion and fi­nally led to the al­liance be­tween a sec­tor of the Armed Forces and the Tra­di­tion­al­ist Col­orado move­ment which over­threw Stroess­ner on Feb­ru­ary 3, 1989.

Min­utes be­fore the end of Stroess­ner’s gov­ern­ment, the voice of Gen­eral An­dres Ro­driguez Pe­dotti was heard am­pli­fied through the coun­try’s ra­dios com­mu­ni­cat­ing the in­ten­tion of uni­fy­ing the Col­orado Party in the gov­ern­ment. A new regime was be­ing born. A few hours later, it was known that Ro­dríguez was the main dri­ver of one part of the Armed Forces and the Col­orado Party to carry out a coup d’é­tat against the other part of the Armed Forces and the Col­orado Party.

Al­though Ro­dríguez’s procla­ma­tion spoke of the uni­fi­ca­tion of the Col­orado Party in gov­ern­ment, the fu­ture was dif­fer­ent. To the sur­prise of many, it was di­vi­sion and not unity that guar­an­teed the strength and con­ti­nu­ity of the party in gov­ern­ment.

Last April 30, 2023, the ANR ob­tained one of its best vic­to­ries; its own ma­jor­ity in both houses of con­gress, 15 or 14 gov­er­nor­ships -the gov­er­norate of Con­cep­ción is in dis­pute- out of the 17 gov­er­nor­ships of the coun­try and a great elec­toral ad­van­tage of its can­di­date for pres­i­dent over the op­po­si­tion can­di­dates.

A quick glance could con­vince us that the procla­ma­tion of An­drés Ro­dríguez found its course al­most 35 years later. The unity of the Col­orado Party in gov­ern­ment at last seems pos­si­ble. Af­ter all, with the re­sults of the elec­tions, the ANR could well do with­out the rest of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties, both to con­duct Paraguayan pol­i­tics and to pass laws.

How­ever, the Col­orado Party has al­ready demon­strated that elec­toral unity is not equal to unity in the ex­er­cise of power. The last decades have al­ready shown that the NRA is a power of di­vided forces. In other words, the in­ter­nal di­vi­sion of the ANR, as a func­tion of gov­ern­ment, has so far been in­evitable and every­thing seems to in­di­cate that this could be the path for the pe­riod 2023-2028. Let’s see why.

Four days af­ter the elec­tions of April 30, Sen­a­tor Os­car “Ca­chito” Sa­lomón said: “We do not want to work as a Col­orado heavy ma­chin­ery, we want to work with all sec­tors”. Only a few hours later, af­ter a meet­ing be­tween elected sen­a­tors of the in­ter­nal col­orado move­ment Fuerza Re­pub­li­cana, the sen­a­tor an­nounced the cre­ation of a block within the Sen­ate with as­pi­ra­tions of be­com­ing a new in­ter­nal move­ment for the next con­sti­tu­tional pe­riod. On Fri­day, May 12, the col­orado mem­bers of the lower house elect, close to the Fuerza Re­pub­li­cana move­ment, also an­nounced that they will fol­low the path of their peers in the sen­ate.

At first glance, any­one could see in the in­ten­tion to “work with all po­lit­i­cal sec­tors” the re­sult of a de­mo­c­ra­tic be­hav­ior that main­tains a spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion for po­lit­i­cal mi­nori­ties. It could even be in­ter­preted that sec­tors of the Col­orado Party de­cided to share power. But this is not a ques­tion of sim­ple po­lit­i­cal will, but of a prag­matic strug­gle for power, based on the way the party sys­tem built af­ter 1989 in Paraguay works.

Since the over­throw of the dic­ta­tor­ship of Al­fredo Stroess­ner in 1989, no in­ter­nal move­ment or po­lit­i­cal leader was able to achieve a mo­nop­oly on the ex­er­cise of power. On the con­trary, the coun­ter­bal­ance of power, among the in­ter­nal move­ments of the ANR, was one of the adap­tive re­sponses to the dis­pute for in­sti­tu­tional po­lit­i­cal power, both within the Col­orado Party and at the gov­ern­men­tal level. Thus, in each pe­riod, the ANR move­ments build a bal­ance of weak forces within the party, i.e., they bet on di­vid­ing power as a strat­egy to re­tain at least part of that power and at the same time be­come an op­tion for gov­ern­men­tal power in the next elec­toral pe­riod.

In turn, this coun­ter­bal­ance be­tween the move­ments is achieved in the con­stant dis­pute for the never achieved party con­trol.  There­fore, to gain pre­em­i­nence within their own party and at the na­tional level, the ANR move­ments re­sort to al­liances with op­po­si­tion par­ties.

In this sense, as we have al­ready men­tioned in more de­tail in two ar­ti­cles pub­lished a few years ago, one of the first ex­am­ples of the new dy­nam­ics of the party sys­tem was gen­er­ated in Sep­tem­ber 1989, that is, at the be­gin­ning of the tran­si­tion to democ­racy. The col­orado move­ments “ex Con­tes­tar­ios” and “Gen­eración In­ter­me­dia” al­lied with the op­po­si­tion and with 11 votes from the Par­tido Lib­eral Rad­i­cal Autén­tico (PLRA) and 2 from the Par­tido Rev­olu­cionario Febrerista (PRF) man­aged to pre­vent the “tra­di­tion­al­ists”, led at that time by Luís María Ar­gaña, Juan Ramón Chaves and Edgar L. Yns­frán, from hav­ing full con­trol of the Junta Elec­toral Cen­tral (JEC), pre­de­ces­sor of the cur­rent Tri­bunal Su­pe­rior de Jus­ti­cia Elec­toral (TSJE).

Since then, the col­orado move­ments have been mak­ing nu­mer­ous al­liances with the op­po­si­tion to ac­cu­mu­late strength against the in­ter­nal move­ments of the ANR and to main­tain a part of the party power. Sev­eral al­liances have been made that set the course of his­tory, such as the rule of no pres­i­den­tial re­elec­tion, prod­uct of the al­liance of the tra­di­tion­al­ist sec­tor with the op­po­si­tion dur­ing the Na­tional Con­stituent As­sem­bly, to pre­vent the re­elec­tion of Pres­i­dent An­dres Ro­driguez. The pro­hi­bi­tion of re­elec­tion was not only a prod­uct of a “fear” of what hap­pened dur­ing the dic­ta­tor­ship, as is of­ten be­lieved, but, as Bader Rachid Lichi states in “Pres­i­den­cial­ismo y tran­si­ción democrática” by Myr­iam Yore, it was also a di­rect re­sult of the ri­valry be­tween the col­orado lead­ers Ar­gaña and Ro­dríguez at the be­gin­ning of the tran­si­tion. The non-re­elec­tion pre­vented the con­tin­u­a­tion of Ro­dríguez in the pres­i­dency and be­came one of the rules of the game that have had a di­rect im­pact on the dis­tri­b­u­tion and dy­nam­ics of power in Paraguay.

Other ex­am­ples of agree­ments be­tween col­orado and op­po­si­tion move­ments re­gard­ing the de­f­i­n­i­tion of rules of the game and dis­tri­b­u­tion of power spaces can be found in the gov­ern­abil­ity pact at the be­gin­ning of the 1990s un­der the gov­ern­ment of Juan Car­los Was­mosy, in the exit of the Armed Forces from in­sti­tu­tional po­lit­i­cal power af­ter the Paraguayan March of 1999, in the al­liances for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of power in the cham­bers of Con­gress, as well as in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of seats in the Supreme Court of Jus­tice, the Pub­lic Min­istry, the Jury for the Pros­e­cu­tion of Mag­is­trates, the Su­pe­rior Tri­bunal of Elec­toral Jus­tice, among oth­ers.

the Colorado Party has already demonstrated that electoral unity is not equal to unity in the exercise of power. The last decades have already shown that the NRA is a power of divided forces. In other words, the internal division of the ANR, as a function of government, has so far been inevitable and everything seems to indicate that this could be the path for the period 2023-2028

There is a sit­u­a­tion that could al­ter the his­tor­i­cal dy­nam­ics of co­op­er­a­tion and com­pe­ti­tion of the par­ties. Due to the COVID health emer­gency, the mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions were held a year later, while the elec­tions for ANR party po­si­tions were not held un­til De­cem­ber 2022, co­in­cid­ing with the pres­i­den­tial in­ter­nal elec­tions. This means that the mu­nic­i­pal and party elec­tions, which were con­sid­ered in­ter­me­di­ate dur­ing the sec­ond year of any pres­i­den­tial term, were moved to the third year (ex­pected in 2026), so it is pos­si­ble that the in­ter­nal move­ments of the ANR will seek to lower the in­ten­sity of their in­ter­nal dis­putes, since the need to ac­cu­mu­late elec­toral strength will be de­layed.

How­ever, an­other fac­tor that could ac­cel­er­ate the di­vi­sions is the sit­u­a­tion of the pres­i­dent of the ANR and leader of the Honor Col­orado move­ment, Ho­ra­cio Cartes, who is un­der US scrutiny and could be the sub­ject of an ex­tra­di­tion re­quest or spe­cific US de­mands to the Peña ad­min­is­tra­tion. This sit­u­a­tion could lead to the pres­i­dent-elect dis­tanc­ing him­self from his men­tor and could have an im­pact on the Honor Col­orado Move­ment.

Per­haps that is why sec­tors of the Col­orado Party re­mind Peña that Fuerza Re­pub­li­cana has been the ma­jor­ity part­ner in his vic­tory. On the one hand, they push for the for­ma­tion of an in­de­pen­dent bloc away from Honor Col­orado within the ANR un­der the idea of main­tain­ing, for the time be­ing, a low in­ten­sity di­vi­sion with­out iden­tity charge. On the other hand, they aim at dis­put­ing Honor Col­orado’s ca­pac­ity to in­flu­ence the pres­i­dent-elect. A sort of strug­gle for a still non-ex­is­tent “Peñismo” which, it re­mains to be seen if it will be formed.