Elections 2023: A moment of destiny for Paraguay …. and Taiwan
Taipei & Washington appeared winners in an election that bucked recent trends in Latin America. Conservatives maintained their three-quarters of a century hold over this South American republic.
Continuing our pledge at Andelman Unleashed to report and comment on every national election everywhere in the world….on Sunday, voters in Paraguay went to the polls for a potentially epiphanal contest.
Some 12,000 miles away, Taiwan may actually have been the biggest winner in Sunday's vote for the presidency of Paraguay with a 44-year-old conservative newcomer gaining the presidency in a surprisingly lopsided vote.
Santiago Peña Palacios is an economist by training and formerly the nation's Minister of Finance, but it was his pledge for continuity in times of revolutionary change that have hit other, larger Latino nations and to maintain the status quo that appeared to resonate most definitively with a strong plurality of voters.
Indeed, Santiago Peña bested two rival candidates who divided the left-wing vote, and who if they had managed to form a joint front would have defeated the candidate of the Colorado party that has ruled Paraguay for all but five of the past 76 years.
Paraguayan newspapers pointed to the 400,000 vote plurality of Peña over his closest rival. And the Colorado party did manage to eke out a slender but definitive majority in both houses of parliament, which voters also chose on Sunday.
The results mean that Paraguay will remain the only South American country still recognizing Taiwan’s independence from China. Of course, there are many other issues where both political sides hardly see eye-to-eye, particularly the rampant corruption under a string of Colorado party leaders. As William Costa reported for London’s Guardian from Asuncion, the Colorado party’s president, a close Peña advisor and a predecessor as president, Horacio Cartes, “was targeted with US sanctions for ‘rampant corruption that undermines democratic institutions’ and alleged links to Hezbollah, starving the Colorado electoral machine of funding and access to bank loans.”
During the campaign, Efrain Alegre, Peña's principal left-wing challenger, called Cartes the "Paraguayan Escobar," referring to the Colombia drug lord Pablo Escobar. Peña insisted, in an interview with The New York Times that Cartes was innocent and that he failed to understand how the Biden administration had made such an error in sanctioning his patron. “I think this is going to be one of the great mysteries, along with: Could it be that man reached the moon? Or who assassinated President Kennedy?” Peña said. “Those unsolved mysteries that we can never know.” But he added, "I am my own person." Cartes was right beside Peña at election night celebrations, as he was throughout the campaign, whispering in his ear and encouraging his young protégé.
"Beloved Horacio, the people are with you," Peña led the crowd chanting Sunday evening. Peña has made some vast promises during the campaign—creating 500,000 new jobs, free kindergarten, slashed fuel and energy prices, and more police—with little real sense how he'd pay for all this as taxes remain among the lowest in the world.
Peña's victory does creates a dilemma for the Biden administration going forward. As a former economist for the International Monetary Fund in Washington, Peña certainly understands the value to Paraguay of maintaining close relations with a United States fully able to provide a financial lifeline going forward. And with respect to diplomacy, the path forged by his party and his predecessor should certainly allow him an attentive hearing in Washington.
The Paraguayan president-elect's left-wing opponents had pledged to forge a new and closer relationship with China that they insisted would be beneficial for their impoverished country. That would also have meant severing the close ties that have lasted for decades with Taiwan. Indeed, other recently-elected South American leaders—particularly Brazil's Lula da Silva, whose victory we chronicled last October over determined Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro was heralded by the Biden administration—Since then, Lula has made determined efforts to court favor with Beijing.
Lula was recently given a red-carpet welcome by Xi Jinping in Beijing where the Brazilian leader pledged to bolster relations between the two countries. Not only did Lula call for China's "territorial integrity" over Taiwan to be respected, but he also pledged to join China in mediating an end to the war in Ukraine without calling for Russian withdrawal of its forces.
Without question, Peña's path to victory was paved by his right-wing Colorado party which was founded in 1887 and has dominated Paraguayan politics ever since. For 35 years, from 1954 through 1989, Colorado leader Alfredo Stroessner ruled this nation as a dictator. His parents had emigrated from Bavaria, and he was happy to provide sanctuary to a host of Nazi war criminals including the infamous Josef Mengele and support such fellow pro-Nazi dictators as Spain’s Francisco Franco.]
This time, however, the arrival of two powerful left-wing challengers and the nation's plunging growth rate under Colorado leaders from an average of 4.4% between 2003 and 2018 to 0.7% since 2019, made the leftists' pledges of a new direction for the country at least somewhat appealing. Certainly, they injected an unparalleled degree of chaos into the campaign and the polling leading up to Sunday's voting. For the first time in decades, it appeared simply too close to call.
Now the left is again reduced to the role of a vocal, if somewhat powerless, opposition in parliament and in the political landscape.
And Washington made a first gesture of appeasement, State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller commenting at 11 am Monday:
The United States congratulates the people of Paraguay on successfully holding free and fair elections on April 30. We congratulate President-elect Santiago Peña on his victory in the election. We applaud the efforts of the Superior Court of Electoral Justice and the work of international observation missions.
We look forward to working with President-elect Peña and his government to advance common interests like fighting corruption and impunity and advancing security and economic growth for the benefit of both our countries. Our common interests and shared democratic values will continue to underpin the historic partnership between the people of Paraguay and the United States.
A look toward the future
In two weeks, Thailand and Turkey will be going to the polls to elect new leaders—landmark contests for each nation and, with respect to Turkey, vastly higher stakes in the NATO alliance and the war in Ukraine. Stay tuned for both on Andelman Unleashed.
A very wise & hopefully not prescient observation, professor !!
Truly!
At least it prevents them from a full-on Kevin McCarthyesque alignment with Netanyahu & his bullyboyz !!