the conservative Santiago Peña wins the presidential election

The economist Santiago Peña, candidate of the Colorado (conservative) party in power for seven decades in Paraguay, won the presidential election on Sunday April 30 by a large margin against a center-left rival, who strongly denounced the country’s endemic corruption. .

Santiago Peña, 44, former IMF official, ex-finance minister of President Horacio Cartes (2013-2018) implicated by the United States for corruption, won with 42.7% of the vote, against 27.4% in Efrain Alegre, after 99.9% of the votes counted by the Electoral Tribunal. In Paraguay, the president is elected by a first-past-the-post system, for a non-renewable five-year term.

“We have a lot to do”

Shortly before the official result, Santiago Peña declared his victory, promising to “banish the fatalism that condemns us to our present (…) Starting tomorrow, let’s start drawing the Paraguay we all want, without flagrant inequalities or social injustices. We have a lot to do.”

For weeks, polls had been predicting a tight ballot, rare in Paraguay. Because the “Colorado” has dominated political life there almost without interruption for 76 years, except for a parenthesis on the left under Fernando Lugo (2008 to 2012). A candidate “anti-system”Paraguayo Cubas, with a virulent anti-parliamentary rhetoric, is in 3rd place with 22.9%. “He took votes from both sides, but the most harmed are the opponents” united in the coalition of Efrain Alegre, diagnosed for AFP the political analyst Roberto Codas.