Socially conservative rivals vie for Catholic Paraguay’s top job

A right-wing economist and a center-left lawyer, both social conservatives, will face off Sunday in Paraguay’s most closely-run presidential election in many years.

Santiago Pena, 44, carries the hopes of the right-wing Colorado party in power almost nonstop since 1947, but faces a tough challenge from Efrain Alegre, 60, representing the center-left Concertacion coalition narrowly ahead in opinion polls.

The pair sit on opposite ends of the political aisle, but are on the same page when it comes to abortion and gay marriage: It’s a strong “No” for both.

Alegre started in politics very young, campaigning in opposition to the 1954-89 dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner — one of the longest in Latin American history.

He trained as a lawyer and served as a lawmaker for 15 years, also serving as public works minister more than a decade ago during the only four-year term not won by the Colorado party.

If he wins, Alegre has vowed to reassess Paraguay’s long-standing diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

He has beaten a loud anti-corruption drum, frequently pointing the finger at the ruling party which he has accused of being “linked to organized crime, to money laundering.”

As part of this stance, Alegre has ruled out a tax reform in a country that has one of the lowest rates in the region.

“Corruption robs us of $6 million a day. That means more than $2 billion per year. These are not the conditions within to ask more of the private sector when the public sector is stealing,” he said.

In 2021, he himself was detained for 18 days in a forgery investigation he claims was nothing but a political set up.

On the economic front, he has proposed reducing energy tariffs to boost small- and medium-sized companies and generate jobs in the hydro-electric power giant.

Alegre is the son of a farmer and a merchant from the southeastern Misiones department — the eighth of 12 brothers.

He has four children and has been married to Mirian Irun for 31 years.

This is the Liberal Party leader’s third presidential run.

In 2013, he lost to millionaire businessman Horacio Cartes — the political mentor of Alegre’s rival Pena — who has since been sanctioned for corruption by the United States.

Five years later, he was narrowly beaten by the Colorado party’s Mario Abdo Benitez, soon stepping down after serving his constitutionally-limited single term.

Alegre vigorously bats away talk of legalizing abortion or gay marriage.

“I am against abortion and all these issues,” he said recently. “They are resolved in the Constitution, they are resolved in law, they are not a subject of debate. What is there to discuss?”

This is the first presidential race for Pena, who previously came closest when he lost the conservative primary to Abdo in 2017.

Economy minister under corruption-tainted Cartes, and a former IMF economist, he is widely seen as a technocrat with little political exposure.

He studied at Columbia University in New York.

Pena had previously come under fire for praising the “stability” he said Stroessner had brought to the country, overlooking the dictatorship’s toll of up to 3,000 people dead or disappeared.

He has promised to create 500,000 jobs, without specifying how.

For him, too, abortion and gay marriage are a no-go, defending the family “in its traditional composition: mother, father and children.”

Pena is the youngest of three siblings and is married to his childhood sweetheart Leticia Ocampo. The couple has two children.

“I became a father at 17. It was a difficult time in my life,” he once told an interviewer. 

“But it led me to build on very solid principles of commitment, of responsibility, of honesty, of integrity, of knowing that there are people who depend on you. And without realizing it, when I was 17, I began to develop a vocation of service,” said Pena.