Sofía Scheid, candidate for vice president for José Luis Chilavert’s Youth party, analyzed the current situation of her campaign. The expert in educational issues, she recalled her passage as a Lugo technician years ago. She affirmed that with Chilavert, she can be part of a work team that seeks what she considers to be the best for the country; the generation of wealth for the population.
She also highlighted that she currently has the space that women deserve and offers an alternative for change to a corrupted system such as the national political arena.
You come from a red family, but for the 2008 elections, I support the leftist candidacy of Fernando Lugo. Today, support José Luis Chilavert. Why did you decide to abandon your red roots and support Lugo? And why now did he abandon Lugo to support a right-wing candidacy like Chilavert’s?
In the Lugo project I was hired as a technician, it is very different, in addition, the Lugo project had a center-left floor. Where we put a sector of technicians with the development look of the right. At this moment, I am on an electoral political path where we design a country that has a center-right floor, why? because José Luis is from the right, me too. It is better for me to be honest with Paraguayans, instead of saying that I am from such and such a center. Because a country develops from all perspectives, but the leaders must recognize from which stream they come.
In the Lugo project I did not have any electoral position, therefore I had no decision-making power and yes to propose the big changes. Now I am a candidate for vice president of a political project that has a right-wing framework and development model. I believe in the generation of wealth and not in the distribution of poverty.
That does not mean that I cannot work with all sectors of my country, it does not mean that I cannot work with people from the extreme left, from the extreme right. Today we need a pragmatic look, the vision of ideologies make the separation. That is why it is necessary to convene before a political project of great changes where all Paraguayans see ourselves reflected. José Luis Chilavert is from the right and invites me as a woman for the vice presidency that allowed me to summon many women. If it wasn’t a political platform like this, these women wouldn’t be visible. We always highlight the Paraguayan woman, but the men are the only ones who make the decisions. This is the moment that José Luis gives me the place that corresponds to women. We are on the side of the gentlemen, not behind, that is why I summon the political project that we are working on for the territory and we are doing that from the electoral point of view. I don’t owe anything to any politician, I don’t owe anything to any party. We have never lived on politics, on electoral processes.
If you are in favor of the right, why did you abandon your red bases to support Lugo?
Because I was never a member of the Colorado Party. I am culturally affiliated like many, like my whole family, but I have never been in the military. Within the Lugo project I was a technician. Now I am militating within a change project that is under the umbrella of the youth party.
What are the differences between a leadership like Lugo’s and Chilavert’s?
President Lugo, from a political point of view, has been one of the leaders who called for the beginning of the breakdown of the system. Obviously they did not allow him to carry on because he collided with a system that encompasses all the parties, the private sector, the public sector, which make a government model possible. Obviously, Lugo did not come from the partisan political systems, which is why they did not allow him to carry out the big changes, so the breakdown of the system did not materialize.
The difference in leadership between the two is that Mr. Chilavert comes from the private sector. People hold him in their hearts as a great goalkeeper, but he does not appear in politics as an athlete. He introduces himself, demonstrating the tools of how he survived and built his soccer career with a lot of effort, stoically, and the economic efforts that led him to create companies.
So we have differences in that Chilavert is a businessman who never stopped working. He has been an entrepreneur for 30 years, you have to know that a person’s life is undergoing redesigns and then those redesigns do allow them to add value to other compatriots.
