Santiago Peña wins the elections and maintains the hegemony of the

The presidential elections in Paraguay, held this Sunday (30), ended with the victory of the candidate of the Colorado Party, economist Santiago Peña, 44 years old.

With more than 83% of the polls counted, Peña gets 43.5% of the votes [1,1 milhão de votos totais] and an advantage of almost 16 percentage points over the runner-up, Efraín Alegre, from the Liberal Party, who has 27.6%.

Faced with an irreversible advantage, the Superior Court of Electoral Justice (TSJE) declared the government candidate [Peña representa a continuidade do setor que governa atualmente, com Abdo Benítez] as president-elect. He is due to assume, next August, a five-year term, until August 2028.

The economist’s victory also means that the Colorado Party maintains its hegemony in Paraguay, which began with the coming to power of Juan Natalicio González, in August 1948. Since then, the conservative party has almost never lost power in the country, between democratic and the dictatorial period led by General Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989).

The only presidential period in Paraguay that was not led by the Colorados took place between 2008 and 2013, when Lugo won the elections and governed until 2012, the year in which he was the victim of a parliamentary coup d’état orchestrated by the Liberal Party, of his then deputy Federico Franco. , who governed during the last year of his term.

That alliance between liberals and progressives was re-edited in the last elections, under the leadership of Efraín Alegre, from the Liberal Party, who was Minister of Public Works in Lugo. He was defeated in 2018 by Benítez and again this year, against Peña.

In the elections of this 2023, Alegre obtained 27.6% [pouco mais de 700 mil votos totais]. The performance was significantly below that achieved five years ago, when he surpassed the mark of one million votes, getting 43.1% [3,3% a menos que o vencedor, Abdo Benítez].

The third place this year was the ultranationalist Payo Cubas, from the Cruzada Nacional party. He got about 22.1% of the votes [pouco mais de 500 mil votos totais]achieving the best result of the extreme right in the history of Paraguay.

Another representative of the extreme right, former goalkeeper José Luis Chilavert, even ranked fourth in some polls at the beginning of the year, but his candidacy ended up deflating in the final stretch, and he finished fifth, with 0.8% [pouco menos de 20 mil votos totais].