Paraguay: Municipal elections pose risk for President Cartes
Paraguay’s upcoming 15 November municipal elections could prove a significant test for President Horacio Cartes and the ruling Asociación Nacional Republicana (ANR-PC). Looking to shore up support for his administration within the ANR-PC, President Cartes has said that he will ensure that the ruling party “sweeps the country” in the municipals. But with Cartes’ government facing various protests and other signs of social discontent, support for the opposition appears to be on the rise and the ANR-PC now wants to avoid the elections from turning into a referendum on the Cartes administration. If the ANR-PC performs poorly in the municipals, the in-party divisions that have lately made life difficult for the Cartes administration could be further exacerbated.
After Cartes’ ‘Honor Colorado’ party faction succeeded in winning the heavily disputed internal party elections, President Cartes said that his main objective would be to make sure that the ruling party won a decisive victory in the municipal contests as a way to shore up party unity. The campaign ahead of the ANR-PC internal party elections exposed the deep divisions between Cartista and anti-Cartista party factions, and although the anti-Cartista faction was ultimately defeated, it performed sufficiently well to ensure its survival and for the Cartistas to take it seriously [RBS-15-08]. Indeed, the solid performance by the anti-Cartista faction in the internal party elections meant that many anti-Cartista candidates managed to secure the ANR-PC nomination for a number of mayoral and city council seats up for grabs in the municipal elections.
Cartes’ promise that the ANR-PC would “sweep the country” and turn it “Colorado red” in the municipals was thus meant as a gesture towards ANR-PC dissidents, signalling the end of the internal rifts and a call to now concentrate on defeating the opposition. Following the internal party elections, the suspicion among ANR-PC dissidents was that Cartes would seek to punish the in-party opposition by refusing to offer them access to the party’s extensive political machinery, reserving this (and allegedly also the discretionary use of State resources) for Cartista candidates. So, Cartes’ vow was well-received by the dissident faction leaders, who have agreed to work with the president and the new party leadership to achieve this.
This, in turn, has helped significantly to reduce the tensions that in recent months have strained relations between the Cartes executive and the ANR-PC-dominated national legislature. But delivering on this promise and ensuring that the ANR-PC makes significant gains in the municipal elections is now critical for Cartes.
Other political detractors take umbrage
But as much as Cartes’ vow pleased the ANR-PC, it has upset his political detractors outside of the ruling party. Cartes’ remarks regarding the elections were condemned by the opposition parties from across the political spectrum as an unlawful attempt by the president to use his office to influence the elections. The main opposition centrist Partido Liberal Radical Auténttico (PLRA) said that Cartes’ comments suggested that the ANR-PC would return to its old ways and resort to the illegal use of state resources to support its candidates in the campaign. The leftist opposition went further, accusing Cartes of seeking to do away with any political opposition and once again turn Paraguay into a one-party state as it had been for 30 years under the Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship (1954-1989).
With these arguments, the newly created radical left-wing party, Partido Paraguay Pyahurã (PPP), called for a demonstration and march to be held in the capital, Asunción, on 29 October to demand Cartes’ resignation and the installation of a “patriotic council” to assume government control. PPP’s demand may be extreme but its call was heeded by various local trade unions including the umbrella Central Nacional de Trabajadores (CNT), the Organización de la Educación del Paraguay-Sindicato Nacional (Otep-SN) teachers’ unions, and the Federación Nacional Campesina (FNC) peasant farmers’ organisation. This ensured that thousands of people marched down to Cartes’ personal residence in Asunción. Protest organizers also called on voters to express their dissatisfaction by spoiling their ballots in the municipal elections.
The PPP protest came on the back of weeks of protests organized by secondary and university students and by the cooperatives sector. The students’ mobilisations were part of their ongoing protest campaign demanding greater education sector spending and for the authorities to tackle corruption at the Universidad Nacional de Asunción (UNA) [RBS-15-10], while the cooperatives are protesting against the implementation of a 10% value added tax (VAT) on loans offered by cooperatives. The cooperatives sector protest, in particular, appeared to rattle the government. After thousands of people joined their march to the finance ministry, and the organizers called on voters to “punish” the government in the municipal elections, the government reacted by postponing the introduction of the tax until next year as demanded by the sector (see sidebar).
Surge in support for the opposition
The PPP protest did not produce a reaction from the government, which sought to dismiss it as a political stunt to destabilize it. Nonetheless, the rolling protests appear to represent a genuine generalized feeling of discontent with the Cartes government, and this is driving voters towards the opposition. This appears to be particularly true in the all important contest for Asunción.
In a bid to present a strong challenge against the ANR-PC in the capital, an alliance of leftist parties and the PLRA decided to join forces and back the candidacy of local TV personality, Mario Ferreiro. This strategy appears to be working. The voting intention polls released in early November give Ferreiro, who had a tilt at the presidency in 2013 backed by the leftist Alianza País coalition, a healthy 16-18 percentage point lead over the ANR-PC candidate, incumbent mayor Arnaldo Samaniego. The polls give Ferreiro 49%-57% of voting intentions, while Samaniego has 31%-41%.
Samaniego is a close Cartes ally and the fact that he is trailing Ferreiro has been attributed to both his less than stellar record as mayor and his close association with Cartes. Indeed a poll by Ibope Cies of ANR-PC voters, published on 9 November, shows that as many as 44% of them would vote for Ferreiro rather than Samaniego. According to Ibope, Samaniego’s lower level of support among ANR-PC sympathisers is due to the fact that most voters perceive that he has failed to fulfil the promises he made in his 2010 electoral campaign- in particular the promise to clean up the city, and the implementation of a vast road overhaul programme to improve road traffic circulation.
Meanwhile, the polls also show that the ANR-PC could lose control of a number of municipalities in Central department, the country’s most populous department, home to 27.2% of the national electorate and which contains Asunción and the satellite cities that make up the Greater Asunción area. According to the polls, ANR-PC candidates in the ANR-PC-controlled Greater Asunción municipalities of San Lorenzo, Fernando de la Mora, Lambaré, and Mariano Roque Alonso are currently trailing their opposition rivals. According to the local press, this is largely due to lingering in-party differences as candidates do not appear to have the full support of the respective local party leaderships. Against this backdrop, Cartes has now fully immersed himself in the campaign, leading rallies across the country. Meanwhile his allies are constantly reminding ANR-PC supporters that the elections “are not a referendum on the Cartes government but an electoral dispute between the ANR-PC and its opponents”.
- Backtracking over VAT
On 22 October, Paraguay’s finance minister, Santiago Peña, announced the postponement of the introduction of the VAT on loans given by cooperatives to their members until April 2016. The new tax was due take effect on 1 November following its approval by congress. But after the mass march staged by the cooperatives sector against the tax that same day, Peña appeared on national TV and said that the government had decided to postpone its implementation for six months in order to better analyse its impact. The cooperatives, which want the tax scrapped, had demanded that its implementation be delayed for a year to allow for a more careful analysis of the negative consequences it would have for the local economy.
- PLRA counts on Cartes rejection factor
On 10 November, Senator Miguel Abdón Saguier, the president of Paraguay’s main opposition Partido Liberal Radical Auténtico (PLRA), said that the party had perceived that there was widespread rejection of President Horacio Cartes and the way in which he was running the country and this could be a determinant factor in the municipal elections. Saguier said that Cartes’ heavy involvement in the Asociación Nacional Republicana-Partido Colorado (ANR-PC) electoral campaign had only reinforced the idea that the contest was a referendum on the Cartes administration, and that the electorate wanted to punish “Cartes’ candidates” by voting for non-ANR-PC candidates. Saguier said that he expected Arnaldo Samaniego to lose the Asunción mayoral election as this would be “the biggest blow for Cartes”.