Paraguay's Partido Colorado likely to return to power in upcoming elections.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
On April 21, ten months after the June 22, 2012, coup that toppled democratically elected President Fernando Lugo and installed the de facto government of Federico Franco (NotiSur, July 13, 2012), Paraguayans will return to the ballot boxes. They will do so with the certainty that the Partido Colorado (Asociacion Nacional Republicana, PC), in power from 1947 to 2008, including throughout the dictatorship of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989), will return to power and that the new president will be Horacio Cartes. Cartes is a powerful businessman with no political past but with alleged links to the smuggling, drug trafficking, and laundering money of the mafias. Moreover, this will be the first time in his life that the 56-year-old Cartes will vote (NotiSur, Jan. 18, 2013).
The Franco government refused to give diplomatic guarantees to a Union de Naciones Suramericanas (UNASUR) election observer team. The permanent electoral observation group set up last October by the Organization of American States (OAS) said that the democratic process is proceeding smoothly.
The social climate, however, is tense. Since September 2012, three well-known campesino leaders have been murdered--the latest on Feb. 19 --and rural workers organizations accuse the large soy growers and multinational mining interests of being the intellectual authors and hiring assassins to kill their top leaders.
Polling firms and principal political leaders say the only question is whether Cartes will obtain a large enough legislative majority to govern without having to negotiate with other political forces, except in those cases that constitutionally require a special majority.
Until late January, the polls, conducted every two weeks, agreed that the Colorado candidate would obtain between 36% and 39% of the vote. That majority, while comfortable, would not be "absolute." But, on Feb. 2, former Gen. Lino Oviedo, founder and leader of the Union Nacional de Ciiudadanos Eticos (UNACE), died in a helicopter accident, which could change the outlook enough to make Cartes' dream of capturing more than 50% of the vote a reality.
Caudillo's Death Changes Race
Exactly 23 years earlier, on Feb. 2, 1989, grenade in hand, the then colonel known for his diminutive stature--he was just 1.62 meters tall (5' 3")--entered the government palace to announce to Stroessner that he had just been overthrown and that he would be replaced by another general, Andres Rodriguez.
During another February...
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