On January 27, Esperanza Martínez, current national senator for the Guasu Front, announced her candidacy for the presidency of the Republic. Three months later, in April, she defeated Sixto Pereira in the internal ones of his party, so she remains as representative of the progressive nucleation facing the internal ones of the Coalition in December of this year.
During the following four months, he dedicated himself to initiating talks to form presidential badges with the candidates of the main opposition party (PLRA). However, given the lack of success, he decided to decline his aspirations on August 15, once again aiming for re-election in the Senate, a position to which he is aspiring for the third time.
Did you decide to change the candidacy for the presidency for that of the Senate for the greater good?
The Guasu – Ñemongeta Front has the firm intention of collaborating with this process of uniting the opposition by carrying out an agenda and a proposal that characterizes a series of transformations that we have been defending since the Government of Fernando Lugo. For this reason, when it was my turn to be a candidate for the presidency for the bloc, you saw that our position was to go to the presidency because it is the Executive, the president’s hand, that defines the political line. We saw that our candidacy guaranteed the continuation of the process initiated by Fernando Lugo. Within this coalition that was created as Concertación, it forces us to have an ally of the Liberal Party in the internal ones. We have spoken with almost all the referents in the race, we did not get more than they gave us the vice presidency. And in this context, Fernando Lugo’s illness also arises, forcing us to reinforce efforts so that the list of senators and the multi-member lists have the best names.
What is the future with this adverse situation for Fernando Lugo?
On our part it continues to be to strengthen the construction of the third progressive space within the opposition. And above all discuss the ideas that we consider important. That is why there is a debate on the agenda, it was one of the topics discussed by comrades who are withdrawing from the Coalition. We need a process of alternation, to get out of a period of 70 years of one-party rule. But we also need Paraguay to have a progressive agenda for change. The people not only want new authorities, they also want a road map that means great transformations for Paraguay.
Can the rise of leftist governments in the region contribute to continuing the transformation process initiated by Lugo?
Some say that there was like a new Condor Plan in the region where legal cases are created about strategic political actors linked to large media campaigns. They stigmatize and act on the political profiles of the candidates. Lula’s case is the most emblematic since he ended up in jail and out of the elections. He passed the electoral process and was found not guilty but lost the election. We had a trial like that of Dilma Rousseff for administrative reasons only. Our debt is historical, the most important in nine years. The recipes are being applied to the region, now the pandemic, climate change, Ukraine with its war have been added. So today poverty, inequality, lack of employment and more, are very hard elements in the region. This creates discontent in the citizenry.
Where is Paraguay in the political context?
Paraguay receives all the blows of international issues. Perhaps, Paraguay has the aggravating circumstance that they are historically deficient. If we talk about the health system of the region and the health system of our country. Paraguay already had structural problems for people’s access to health. The deficiency of therapy beds, that has been going on for decades. What the pandemic did was make it more explicit. But that chickens are needed to be able to access health, it is not a problem now. The complex and difficult context is the same as in the region.
What are the proposals they offer?
We believe that we must think from 2023, we must make a social pact to agree on measures that will begin in the other period but looking at the long term as State policies. Think about State policies that cannot be finished only in the next period. And there returning to health, education, the change of our economic and productive model. We are extractivists, we export products without added value. We need the industrialization of the country. Create a nearby workforce, we have an agricultural workforce.
