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POZO COLORADO, Paraguay – Paraguayans elected Santiago Peña, a 44-year-old conservative economist, as the new president on Sunday, keeping the South American country in control of the right-wing Colorado Party that has run the country for all but five terms. from 76 years ago.
The results mean that Paraguay, a landlocked country of seven million people, has bucked Latin America’s leftward shift in recent years. However, Paraguayans delivered victory to the right-wing candidate who made vague promises to increase jobs, lower energy prices and remove drug addicts from the streets.
Mr. Peña had 43 percent of the vote with 99 percent of the votes counted, defeating two challengers who split the opposition vote.
The election could affect Paraguay’s relationship with the United States, a close ally.
Mr. Peña is a political protégé of Paraguay’s former president, Horacio Cartes, who is one of the richest men and president of the Colorado Party. In January, the American Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Mr. Cartes through accusations that he has doled out millions of dollars in bribes to pave the way to power and that he has built relationships with the Islamist militant group Hezbollah.
In his victory speech Sunday night, Mr. Peña stood next to Mr. Cartes, hugged him and thanked him first. “Your contribution, president, can only be paid for in the currency of respect, appreciation and approval,” Mr. Peña said. “Thank you for this Colorado victory.”
Mr. Peña’s victory shows that his party retains a strong grip on Paraguayan society decades after the fall of the dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner, the Colorado Party regime that ruled from 1954 to 1989.
The Colorado Party’s powerful political machine was on display on Election Day, with a dense network of political operatives spread across the state. They monitored polling stations, transported indigenous people to the polls and pressured voters to vote for Mr. Peña.
The organization looks to balance the burden of Mr. Peña’s hard sell to voters. During the campaign, he presented himself as a fresh face – despite being Paraguay’s former finance minister and a key figure in the country’s dominant political party, founded in 1887.
Mr. Peña is also trying to oust Paraguay’s current leader, President Mario Abdo Benítez, who is also from the Colorado Party. Mr Benítez, who cannot run again due to term limits, is one of the least popular Latin American leaders for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to opinion polls.
But Mr. Peña’s toughest challenge is his relationship with Mr. Cartes. The U.S. government accused Mr. Cartes of a “coordinated pattern of corruption,” saying he paid up to $50,000 a month to lawmakers during his presidency and that he did some illegal business at events hosted by Hezbollah.
Mr Cartes has denied the allegations, dismissing them as politically motivated. He declined an interview request.
One of his political opponents, Efraín Alegre, who came in second on Sunday with 27 percent, seized on the accusation during the campaign, calling Mr. Cartes the “Pablo Escobar of Paraguay” and saying Mr. Peña was Mr. Cartes’ “secretary.”
Mr. Peña said in an interview on Friday that he believed Mr. Cartes was innocent and that he did not understand how the United States could be wrong.
“I think it’s going to be one of the great mysteries, along with: Did humans get to the moon? Or who killed President Kennedy?” said. “An unsolvable mystery that cannot be understood.”
On Sunday night, as he stood next to his mentor, Mr. Peña led a victory party with chants of “Dear Horacio, the people are with you.”
Mr. Peña’s relationship with Mr. Cartes is on the minds of some voters.
“He’s a good leader, but if he wins, it won’t be him who governs, it’s sad,” said Mariano Ovelar, 39, who waits tables and plays a keyboard at a truck stop restaurant in rural northern Paraguay.
Mr. Peña, a former International Monetary Fund economist in Washington, focused much of his campaign on the economy, promising to create 500,000 jobs, offer free kindergarten, lower fuel and energy prices, and get more police on the streets.
The only explanation for how he will pay for these promises is to expand the economy by cutting red tape and keeping taxes among the lowest in the world. “Paraguayans know that we can be the most developed country in the world,” Mr. Peña said.
Paraguay is one of the poorest countries in South America. A quarter of the population lives in poverty, schools are rated among the worst in the region and hospitals lack basic medicines.
Mr. Peña attributes Paraguay’s backwardness to its defeat in a war against its neighbors that ended in 1870 and wiped out most of the male population. “The conflict has made us miss the train of development,” he said.
His answer to these problems is to streamline government and make Paraguay more business-friendly.
Mr Peña appeared to be aiming to appease the United States, particularly by pledging to keep Paraguay among the club of 13 countries – mostly small island nations – that maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan rather than China. Paraguay and Taiwan closed relations in 1957, when both were ruled by dictators, and Taiwan has paid for Paraguay’s modernist congress building and donated the president’s jet.
But as a result, Paraguayan farmers face obstacles in exporting soybeans and beef to China. Mr. Peña said in an interview that close economic ties with Taiwan would leave Paraguay in a better long-term position than building its economy on selling commodities to China.
Cristaldo Tabares, 65, a builder who lives on the edge of the river in the capital, Asunción, said he voted for Mr. Peña on Sunday but refused. “I like Efraín more than Peña,” he said, referring to the No. 2 finisher.
Mr. Tabares wants to vote for Mr. Alegre because he represents change, he said, “but I can’t.” This was because the Colorado Party had employed him as a polling station official and he felt he had to vote for his employer.
Asked what he thought of Paraguay’s potential future under Mr. Peña, he shrugged and laughed: “No one knows what will happen.”
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