Sunday, Paraguay came together to return the Colorado Party — which controlled the nation for six decades before being ousted in 2008 — to power with the election of Horacio Cartes as president. With half of all polling stations reporting, Cartes scored an undisputable victory over Liberal Party candidate Efrain Alegre, with 46 percent of the vote versus Alegre’s 36.9 percent.
Cartes’ victory follows a race that was rife with controversy from the beginning. Neither a homophobic outburst — in which Cartes stated that he would shoot himself in the testicles before accepting a son that would marry another man — nor allegations of his involvement in illegal cigarette smuggling to Argentina and Brazil, nor a drug bust on his property were enough to dissuade voters from favoring Cartes.
Cartes was the target of a joint U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration-Office of National Security Intelligence investigation of potential drug money laundering, codenamed Operation Heart of Stone. According to a leaked diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks,
“[A]gents have infiltrated CARTES’ money laundering enterprise, an organization believed to launder large quantities of United States currency generated through illegal means, including through the sale of narcotics, from the TBA (Tri-Border Area: Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil) to the United States.“
An estimated 60 percent of all of the illegal cigarettes available in Argentina may come from Cartes’ farms.
Cartes was convicted on wire fraud charges in the 1980s and was imprisoned for a year before reportedly fleeing for four years. He only re-emerged from hiding in 1989 when a judge overturned his sentence. Cartes claimed to be nothing more than an ignorant employee in regards to these charges and went on the run to “gather evidence” of his innocence.
In 1996, a case against Cartes for falsification of public and private documents and other financial crimes was dismissed. In 2000, murder charges against Cartes were dropped because of statute of limitation issues. Charges of correspondence violations were dropped for similar reasons in 2002.
Also in 2000, a plane loaded with marijuana and cocaine was seized by police after it landed on one of Cartes’ farms. Cartes has also been accused of laundering money for Brazilian drug traffickers. The plane had 343 kilograms of marijuana and 20 kilograms of cocaine on board. Paraguay is South America’s largest producer of marijuana.
A conflicted election
Alegre, a Paraguayan senator and former Minister of Public Works and Communications, is not necessarily clean either. The Cartes camp has accused Alegre of embezzling $25 million in government funds. In addition, the outgoing Federico Franco administration — in which Alegre served — has been accused of buying $11.5 million of land from the father of a political leader, Jorge Oviedo, who served as president of the Paraguayan Congress before entering an electoral support pact. Oviedo resigned to avoid impeachment.
Alegre served as an activist and crusader against Paraguay’s strongman Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled the country’s authoritarian government from 1954 to 1989. In contrast, Cartes never held political office before being elected president and only voted for the first time last year.
Cartes is a conservative tobacco tycoon who owns shares in more than 20 companies and is one of the wealthiest men in Paraguay. The Colorado Party — a coalition of landowners and agribusiness who represents the nation’s elite — and Cartes campaigned on a promise of creating jobs and investment in health and education. With a 2012 gross domestic product in excess of South Dakota’s, but less than Alaska’s, the Cartes win is imagined to be a boon to an economy shaken by political instability and the global recession.
“I’m so happy we’re back in power,” said Norma Silva, 48, a Colorado Party member and government employee. “Cartes will create work for young people. He’s the future.” In a brief victory speech, Cartes called for unity. “I won’t work alone,” he told the crowd. “We have to work together to move Paraguay forward.”
The election of Cartes, however, threatens to further estrange Paraguay from the rest of its South American neighbors. Upon the ousting of former President Fernando Lugo in 2012, many ambassadors from neighboring countries were recalled. As a landlocked nation, the country relies on its neighbors for seaport access.
Alegre accepted Cartes’ election without the call for a recount or voting irregularities that accompanied last week’s Venezuelan elections. “El pueblo paraguayo se ha pronunciado y nosotros respetamos, no hay nada que hablar al respecto,” Alegre said at a press conference. (“The Paraguayan people has spoken and we respect that; there is nothing to talk about.”)
In contrast to the unrest in Venezuela, the Liberal Party candidate noted “la conducta ejemplar de la ciudadanía, que se ha comportado de manera extraordinaria sin que se pueda lamentar nada, eso nos llena de satisfacción”. (“The exemplary conduct of the people, who have comported themselves in an extraordinary manner for which they will regret nothing, it leaves us with great pride.”)
Politics, the Paraguay way
Paraguay carries the reputation of being the most corrupt nation in the world. Voters in this mostly rural nation typically vote according to family allegiances, and the conduct of candidates — in or out of office — rarely is considered, unless, of course, it cocerns the conduct of the opposition. “There’s nobody clean in Paraguay,” Hugo Díaz, a former farm administrator, said.
Supporters of the Colorado Party come from the result of “patronage and clientelism,” according to Paraguay specialist Peter Lambert, a professor at the University of Bath. “Access to opportunity in Paraguay still comes from allegiance to the Colorado Party,” he said.
The economy, which depends heavily on soy exports — Paraguay is the sixth largest grower of soybeans in the world — and the manufacture of counterfeit goods, took a massive hit in 2012 in light of the impeachment of President Fernando Lugo, which ultimately led to his resignation in 2012. Lugo’s left-wing reforms were opposed by the landowning elites and by multinational companies that benefits from Paraguay’s agribusinesses. Lugo warned that the election of Cartes will disenfranchise the poorest third of Paraguayans. “The Colorado party represents the interests of a small privileged group,” Lugo told The Guardian. “Its political model is a return to the past.”
“All the candidates are stained,” said María Cattebeke, 31, a teacher who voted in the capital. “So the dirt on Cartes doesn’t really matter.”
Prior to the election of Lugo, the Colorado Party held power since the ratification of the Paraguayan constitution. Before that, starting with the 1947 civil war, Paraguay was controlled by constitutionally-empowered strongmen which assumed authoritarian control of the nation.