Paraguay local elections - October 10, 2021
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  Paraguay local elections - October 10, 2021
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Hashemite
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« on: October 13, 2021, 06:38:44 PM »
« edited: October 13, 2021, 06:43:36 PM by Hash »

Municipal elections were held in Paraguay this past Sunday, October 10.

The ruling conservative/kleptocratic Colorado Party won again, despite their internal divisions, incompetence and corruption. I can't find national vote totals yet but ABC says that the Colorados won 163 of 261 municipalities, against 62 for the opposition Liberals (PLRA), 22 for alliances and 8 for movements. This is slightly more than in 2015. The Colorados won 11 of the 17 departmental capitals and 9 of the 20 cities with the most registered voters.



The victory of the ruling Colorado Party is seen as a good omen for them to win the 2023 presidential elections, while the opposition is again licking its wounds and fighting amongst themselves. In the PLRA, the knives are out for the party's boss and two-timed failed presidential candidate Efraín Alegre, who faces accusations of false invoicing as part of campaign finance irregularities in his 2018 presidential campaign. Alegre was narrowly reelected as president of the PLRA in June, but has many vocal enemies in his party's congressional caucus. Most notably, his long-time rival senator Blas Llano is again calling on Alegre to go: after the elections, he tweeted "what are you waiting for to resign, thief and useless sh*t?" along with a picture of Alegre labelled 'wanted'. Disgruntled Liberals are critical of Alegre's heavily anti-Colorado campaign, which incessantly attacked the corruption and mafias of the ruling party. Alegre has claimed that the results are not that bad for the PLRA: he points out that the opposition (together) won more votes than the Colorado Party, and that the PLRA alone or in coalition won more municipalities than in 2015 (not sure where these numbers are from as they disagree with numbers cited in the media). But with so many electoral defeats as his record, Alegre - who wants to run for a third time in 2023 - looks like a serial loser.

In Asunción, the capital, Colorado incumbent (since 2019) Óscar "Nenecho" Rodríguez was reelected with 47.5% against 42.1% for Eduardo Nakayama, the candidate of a PLRA-led opposition alliance, and 4.7% for Johanna Ortega, a young left-wing candidate who campaigned as an independent opposed to the traditional parties and corruption (she is close to senator Jorge Querey from the left-wing Frente Guasú of former president Lugo). The actual Frente Guasú candidate won only 0.6%.

Óscar "Nenecho" Rodríguez took office as interim intendant (mayor) in 2019 following the resignation of Mario Ferreiro (opposition) as he faced corruption charges. Nenecho is a former reality show contestant - he competed in a dumb game show in 2013 and then in a dancing show similar to DWTS in 2014 - who was elected city councillor in 2015, and then became interim mayor in 2019 despite having nothing to show for himself - well, besides the support of former president Horacio Cartes' clique, the Honor Colorado faction. In 2020, he and 11 other councillors were charged with producing fake documents as part of an irregular contract. Nakayama is a historian and businessman with no prior political experience, and he is close to businessman Norman Harrison, who is considering a presidential candidacy in 2023. Nenecho made xenophobic comments about Nakayama's Japanese ancestry during the campaign.

During the campaign, Ortega uncovered hints of corruption and irregularities in secretive pandemic-related procurement by the city in 2020 and got a court to force the city to make the documents public. These include direct contracts with politically-connected businesses controlled by family clans, irregular signatures and over-invoicing. The scandal might have come too late to matter, and the main opposition candidate, Nakayama, didn't have a good response to it and it may have divided the opposition vote. The media also suggests that Nakayama may have been hurt by being in favour of firing planilleros (paid employees who don't do any actual work), which are a big occupational group in Paraguay.

The Colorado Party won in a landslide in the city council election and seems to have benefited from the new preferential voting system. The Colorados won 48.9% of the vote in the council races against 15.5% for the PLRA and 10.9% for the PPQ. These results give the Colorados 15 seats (up from 11) out of 24 seats.

In Ciudad del Este (Alto Paraná), Miguel Prieto (Mov. Concienca Democrática, opposition) was reelected in a landslide with 61.8% against just 27.2% for controversial Colorado candidate Ulises Quintana, a farcically corrupt guy with direct ties to cross-border drug trafficker Reinaldo Cabaña Santacruz "Cucho". Miguel Prieto, the first non-Colorado mayor of Paraguay's second-largest city, was first elected in 2019 after the Colorado incumbent, Sandra McLeod (wife of local Colorado cacique and arch-corrupt senator Javier Zacarías Irún) was removed from office for being a crook. Prieto portrays himself as an opponent of the 'mafias' and his candidacy benefited from the support of large parts of the PLRA (whose official candidate won just 3.2%) and other opposition parties like the Frente Guasú as well as dissident Colorado factions opposed to the 'narco' Quintana (a Colorado candidate for city council campaigned with billboards saying "I am not a traitor and narcopolítico"). Prieto also faces corruption cases of his own, accused of influence peddling and being part of a bribery scheme.

Quintana, an upstart opposed to the Zacarías clan, had his congressional campaign financed by 'Cucho' and later became a close business partner of the drug lord whose idol is Pablo Escobar. Quintana was arrested in September 2018 as part of an operation against 'Cucho' but an appeals court ordered his release in October 2020, allowing him to return to his seat in the Chamber of Deputies. A judge lifted an order that banned him from leaving the capital, but he's still banned from leaving the country and in April the US State Department designated him as a corrupt foreign actors and banned him from entering the US. Quintana's candidacy was supported by Concordia Colorada, a compromise 'solution' between the two warring clans of the ruling party, president Marito Abdo Benítez's Colorado Añetete and former president Horacio Cartes' Honor Colorado. Because of narco ties, Quintana was opposed by dissident factions of his own party, most notably senator Javier Zacarías Irún, who didn't support Quintana but denied claims that he was supporting Prieto.

The Colorado Party had poor results in the rest of the department. They suffered a major defeat in neighbouring Hernandarias, the city where Cartes' tobacco company (accused of smuggling) was founded, losing to an independent candidate by a wide margin. The party also lost in Minga Guazú, with an independent candidate winning 43% against 36.1% for the Colorado incumbent Digno Cabellero Ruiz (husband of cartista deputy Blanca Vargas), a defeat for the Caballero-Vargas clan which has controlled the municipality for a decade and which is accused of corruption. The PLRA held Presidente Franco, Alto Paraná's second-largest municipality, defeating the brother of the department's governor, Roberto Vaesken (Colorado).

In suburban Asunción (Central Department), the Colorados held their own and made inroads at the expense of the Liberals. The Colorado Party narrowly held Luque (Paraguay's third municipality by population) with 47.4% for the incumbent intendant against 44.2% for a former two-term Liberal intendant. Luque is the old fiefdom of the cartista González Daher clan, led by disgraced former senator Óscar González Daher (once described as being even more powerful than the president), who was expelled from the Senate by his peers in 2017 (a first in Paraguayan history) accused of influence peddling in the judiciary, and later convicted along with his son earlier this year for illicit enrichment and money laundering. González Daher's brother, a former interim president of the Paraguayan football association, was also found guilty of usury - accused of charging up to 100% interest on loans to people, conveniently being nowhere to be found when the loan payment was due and then sweeping in to seize people's properties as 'payment' for not having paid their loans on time. Despite the conviction (which is being appealed), González Daher's son was reelected to a fourth term as city councillor. The incumbent, Carlos Echeverria, also has his own accusations of corruption and embezzlement, and was criticized for outsourcing property tax collection.

In San Lorenzo, former minister of youth 'Felipito' Salomón (Colorado), the son of Óscar 'Cachito' Salomón, the president of the Senate (Colorado Añetete), was elected with 46.1% against 31.6% for opposition candidate 'Freddy' Franco, the son of former president Federico Franco (who served as president following Lugo's sham impeachment in 2012). In Capiatá, unsurprisingly the hegemonic Colorado clan (of senator Derlis Osorio and deputy Erico Galeano, a tobacco magnate close to Horacio Cartes) was reelected with 68.4%. In Lambaré, the Colorado Party confirmed their hold on the municipality, with the election of the incumbent interim intendant, who took over after the PLRA intendant elected in 2015 resigned in 2020 (facing central government intervention for corruption allegations). In Ñemby, the Lanzoni clan (of Liberal senator Blas Lanzoni) was defeated after 20 years in power, with Colorado Party winning 49.4% against 42% for the PLRA's candidate, the son-in-law of Blas Lanzoni (and brother-in-law of outgoing mayor Lucas Lanzoni, accused of massive corruption and irregularities). The Liberals also lost in Itauguá, where the Colorado winner is the owner of a sketchy love motel where there was a noisy orgy during a lockdown last summer.

In Central, the PLRA held Fernando de la Mora, Itá and Villa Elisa (whose mayor became very popular for an unusually competent management of the pandemic) and regained Limpio, with the return of the corrupt and incompetent Liberal clan of the Gómez Verlangieri brothers -- one of which, 'Toto' Gómez Verlangieri, filmed himself having sex with a civil servant in his office (!), for which he barely got a slap on the wrist, although it allowed the Colorados to gain this Liberal stronghold in 2015.

In Encarnación (Itapúa), the third most important city outside of metro Asunción and CDE, opposition incumbent Luis Yd - who became the city's first non-Colorado mayor in 2015 - withstood a major Colorado offensive and was reelected with 56.7% at the head of a multi-party coalition against 39.8% for the Colorado Party. In 2020, the Colorado Party majority on the city council tried to have him removed from office by alleging corruption/irregularities.

In Caaguazú, the PLRA's José 'Papu' Ríos, political heir and son of departmental governor Alejo Ríos, was reelected with 51.4% against 44.4% for the Colorado Party. In Coronel Oviedo, the Colorado Party's Marcos Benítez, an ally of senator Silvio Ovelar (implicated in a very twisted and bizarre vote buying scandal in 2013) who is criticized for being part of some illegal slot machine business, was elected with 49.9% against Liberal deputy (and former governor, 2008-2013) Antonio Buzarquis, twin brother of senator Salyn Buzarquis. As governor, Buzarquis' main priority was building a luxurious mansion for himself in record time (in a country notorious for never completing actual public works), and in 2016 both Buzarquis twins faced paternity/food support claims (Antonio Buzarquis' one being particularly bizarre: at first he had his secretary recognize the son as being his, before finally recognizing the son as his, which meant the kid had two fathers, before changing his mind after having 'doubts' over his paternity and suing to de-recognize his son and stop paying child support).

In Pedro Juan Caballero (Amambay), Liberal cacique José Carlos Acevedo, a close ally of PLRA leader Efraín Alegre and mayor of the town since 2006, was reelected for another term with 55%. The Acevedo clan, dominant for decades in this area bordering the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, owe their power to an old strategic alliance with criminals, most notably the old drug trafficker/contrabandist and 'king of the border', Fahd Jamil Georges, who surrendered to Brazilian authorities in April 2021, scared away by the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). Last year, during the pandemic, Acevedo ignored a military checkpoint and illegally crossed the border to Brazil. Just as further proof of what kind of place the Paraguayan border regions are: the Colorado Party candidate, who won 36.5%, had a suspected drug trafficker as his alternate deputy (who ended being assassinated in August), his brother was a cop caught with liquid cocaine in 2013 and his brother-in-law was accused of being behind a 242kg shipment of cocaine (and also of the attempted murder of his niece).

The Liberals lost Concepción after 26 years to the Colorado Party. The Colorado Party's 'Berni' Villalba, son of a former deputy, won 44.9% against 25.6% for 'Ramonita' Mendoza, a former Liberal deputy and governor. The PLRA incumbent was charged with embezzlement some months ago.
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omar04
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« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2021, 11:43:33 PM »

How were turnout rates across the board?
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Hash
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« Reply #2 on: October 15, 2021, 08:29:03 AM »

How were turnout rates across the board?

It seems to have been around 60.1%, which is a bit more than in 2015 (56.5%). About 2.8 million people voted. In Asunción turnout was 59.7%, in CDE it was 60%, in Encarnación 56.8%, in Luque 56%, in San Lorenzo 52.3%.

There were nearly 100,000 blank and invalid votes, or 3.4% of votes, which is less than in 2015.

No nationwide summary from official sources yet, but these numbers come from said official sources reported in ABC: https://www.abc.com.py/nacionales/2021/10/11/elecciones-municipales-2021-casi-3-millones-votaron-y-hubo-casi-100000-votos-en-blanco-y-nulos/
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