Horacio Cartes is elected president of Paraguay.
The opposition's triumph in Sunday's presidential election returns power to the Colorado Party; the impeachment of President Fernando Lugo last year, carried out by Congress and rejected by the people, confirmed a regression; Cartes's party (center) won with a difference of 9 to 10 percentage points over second-placed Efraín Alegre of the Liberal Party; he will be the commander of a political machine that held power for 61 years and had in the dictator Alfredo Stroessner its harshest and most corrupt face.
247 – The return of the Colorado Party, which ruled, misruled, and shaped Paraguay as the country became known throughout the world and, especially, in Brazil – a land of counterfeit goods, a haven for stolen cars, and a government infested with corruption and authoritarianism – is already underway. According to the Superior Electoral Court (TSJE), it won with a difference of 9 to 10 percentage points compared to the runner-up, Efraín Alegre, of the Liberal Party.
At 23:45 PM, the TSJE website reported that 99,13% of the presidential votes had been counted, with 45,8% for Cartes and 36,95% for Alegre.
At 56 years old, businessman and controversial figure, Cartes is already the heir to a political machine that ruled Paraguay for 60 years. At the head of this structure, which decimated the opposition and exercised power under the aegis of corruption and authoritarianism, was the dictator Alfredo Stroessner. He controlled the country with an iron fist for 35 years and died in exile in Brazil. The victory of former bishop Fernando Lugo in 2008 followed. Last year, Lugo underwent impeachment proceedings in the Paraguayan Congress, which took no more than 36 hours to remove him from power. Lugo's downfall was met with opposition from a large part of the population, who held vigils in defense of the elected president, but without success.
In his victory speech, Cartes reaffirmed his electoral commitment to give "a new direction to Paraguay," but everything indicates that he will likely return Paraguay to its historical trajectory of institutional backwardness and endemic corruption, in the style of the Colorado Party that he came to control with his financial power.