Paraguay’s Colorado Party retakes power in presidential elections

Paraguay’s historic center-right Colorado Party was swept back into power on Sunday when voters elected 56-year-old tobacco magnate Horacio Cartes as president following a dirty campaign that was characterized by accusations of corruption and money laundering.

Apart from a short spell that was interrupted in 2008 – with the election of leftist President Fernando Lugo, who was impeached last June – the Colorado Party has governed the country for six decades, including the 35-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner.

Cartes, a political novice who had never voted before joining the Colorado Party four years ago, was allowed to run for president after the powerful grouping changed its rules in January 2011, including the obligation that a candidate must be a member for at least 10 years in order to run.

The only other job Cartes has had that saw him thrust into the public eye was as manager and then president of the Libertad soccer team – a post that enabled him to lead the club to a string of legendary victories. His tenure with Libertad won him national popularity and cemented his reputation in the minds of many Paraguayans as an efficient administrator.

On Sunday, Paraguayans gave him 46 percent of the vote, nine percentage points ahead of Efraín Alegre of the ruling Liberal Party.

A US State Department cable raised allegations that Cartes was involved in money-laundering activities

"My legs trembled at the thought of the enormous and amazing responsibility of being president of all Paraguayans," Cartes told supporters following his victory. “I want the people who did not vote for us to know that I'll put all my efforts into earning their trust.”

Cartes has made a fortune from tobacco, in a country where nearly 40 percent of Paraguay’s 6.6 million people are poor. He holds stock in 25 firms and oversees some 3,500 employees. But his past is littered with murky episodes.

In 1989, he spent nearly a year in jail after he was accused of tax evasion. Although the case hasn’t been fully explained, Cartes said he was released after the charges were dropped on appeal.

One of his supporters, Senator Arnaldo Wiens, became the butt of jokes across social networks after explaining Cartes’ time in jail: “If Cartes was jailed during the dictatorship, it was because he had been persecuted in the same way as Nelson Mandela.” The former dictator Alfredo Stoessner was deposed in February 1989.

In 2004, Brazilian authorities launched an investigation against Cartes for allegedly sending illegal remittances from Paraguay to Brazil. In that same year, a Brazilian parliamentary commission charged his company, Tabacalera de Este, with smuggling “countless cartons of cigarettes.” Paraguay is notorious for contraband trade and illicit financing.

An August 27, 2007 US State Department cable, which was released by whistleblower website WikiLeaks in late 2010, raised allegations that Cartes was involved in money-laundering activities and had been given help to “whitewash” cash by a former Central Bank president Ángel Gabriel González Caceres, who had just been appointed Paraguay's new director of the Secretariat for the Prevention of Money Laundering (SEPRELAD).

Cartes has repeatedly explained that he has no criminal record and that charges, including for drug trafficking (another allegation that surfaced during the campaign) have never been filed against him in Paraguay. During the tense race, Liberal candidate Alegre launched a series of television commercials calling his opponent “a narco.”

Cartes takes over a nation isolated by its neighbors following the sudden impeachment of Lugo last June on charges of failing to uphold his constitutional duties following a land revolt in May in which 17 people were killed, including six police officers.

Paraguay was suspended from the regional Mercosur economic bloc and from the Union of South American Nations (Unasur).

The mostly conservative Paraguayan Congress appointed Federico Franco as president.

Lugo, meanwhile, became a senator on the leftist Guasú Front.