April 30, 2023, 20:39 PM
April 30, 2023, 20:39 PM
Smiling and friendly, the right-wing economist Santiago Peña, elected president of Paraguay this Sunday by a wide margin, managed to retain power for the Colorado Party, despite its strong divisions, in the midst of accusations of corruption against its top leaders.
At 44 years old, this was the first time that Peña participated in a national election. His only previous experience had been when in 2017 he lost the presidential nomination in the Colorado primaries against the current president Mario Abdo.
Tall and athletic, Peña He is considered a technocrat with a brilliant academic career, but little political experience.
His entry into politicsIt came from the hand of former president Horacio Cartes (2013-18)today sanctioned by the United States as “significantly corrupt”, who affiliated him with the Colorado Party and had him as Minister of Economy.
To attack him, his adversaries they call him “the secretary of Cartes”.
But he seems unaffected. “He is someone very serene His tranquility is impressive,” said one of his collaborators.
In the living room of his elegant house in Asunción, his photos are exhibited embracing his wife Leticia Ocampos, with whom he sand married when they were teenagers after she got pregnant. In addition to that son, now 26 years old, the couple has a 17-year-old girl.
“I was a father at 17 years old. It was a hard time in life. It was not planned, but it led me to build on very solid principles of commitment, responsibility, honesty, integrity, knowing that there are people who depend on you. And without realizing it, at the age of 17 I began to develop a vocation for service,” he said.
Peña remembers that the families of both helped them and that their father It encouraged him to continue studying. He also acknowledges the support of his mother and his two older brothers.
So, he was able to go to Columbia University in New York and worked for a time for the International Monetary Fund. He was also part of the board of the Central Bank of Paraguay.
He says that during the electoral campaign he received “great family support.” “I have a wonderful family nucleus that has accompanied me, that has been a containment throughout this period,” he commented in an interview with AFP.
Rejects the legalization of abortion because it seems to him “the easiest, a shortcut”. And he declares himself determined to defend the family “in its traditional composition: mom, dad and children.”
Taiwan, Jerusalem, employment, dictatorship
Pena has said that will preserve diplomatic relations with Taiwandespite the questioning of productive sectors, especially agribusiness and livestock, which ask to open exports to China.
He also assured that he is joined by “a enormous bond of brotherhood with Israel” and it is proposed to move the Paraguayan embassy to Jerusalem again, a measure that Cartes had taken at the end of his government in line with Donald Trump and that the current president Mario Abdo reversed.
Although during the campaign did not present a government programone of its main promises was the creation of 500,000 jobs.
And in a country that suffered one of the longest dictatorships in Latin America, that of alfredo stroesner (1954-89), has been criticized for stating that it brought “stability” to the country.
“I think that Stroessner breaks with the cycle of political instability,” he told AFP. “Unfortunately, many freedoms and human rights were curtailed, under the pretext of stability,” she completed.
