Paraguay’s President-Elect Santiago Pena: Puppet or Pragmatist?

By Lucinda Elliott and Daniela Desantis

ASUNCION (Reuters) – Paraguay’s President-elect Santiago Pena, a clean-cut former central financial institution director, will want all his wits and funky to steer the South American nation via financial headwinds hurting voters and rising strain from farmers to chop ties with Taiwan.

The previous Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF) economist, who was hand-picked by the highly effective head of the nation’s dominant political power, the conservative Colorado Celebration, scored a robust victory in presidential elections on Sunday.

Pena, 44, fended off center-left opposition challenger Efrain Alegre with round 43% of the vote to some 27.5%, based on preliminary outcomes from the nation’s electoral courtroom. He claimed victory and Alegre acknowledged the consequence.

“Now we have lots to do, after the final years of financial stagnation, of fiscal deficit, the duty that awaits us just isn’t for a single particular person or for a celebration,” Pena mentioned in his victory speech, calling for “unity and consensus”.

“The time has come to postpone our variations to prioritize the frequent causes that unite us as a nation.”

Pena, who takes workplace on Aug. 15, will face pressures to shrink a ballooning fiscal deficit, appease farmers calling for the nation to ditch Taiwan and open relations with China, and navigate corruption allegations from the U.S. Treasury which have rattled the highly effective get together chief and shut ally Horacio Cartes.

Nonetheless, Pena will be capable to hold a cool head amid the tumult, his supporters say.

“I feel what characterizes him is that he has infinite tranquility,” mentioned Lea Gimenez, who served as Pena’s deputy when he was finance minister and was later finance minister herself.

“Even throughout this election marketing campaign, which has been so lengthy as a result of we’ve been within the course of for nearly a yr and a half, I’ve not seen him as soon as lose his mood.”

“Santi,” as he’s typically identified, has pledged business-friendly insurance policies that target job creation, retaining taxes low and attracting international funding.

All through the marketing campaign the Colorado Celebration candidate has vowed to increase Paraguay’s decades-long diplomatic relations with Taiwan, regardless of pressures to divulge heart’s contents to China and its big shopper demand for soybeans and beef. Paraguay is considered one of solely 13 international locations globally to acknowledge Taiwan.

Those that know Pena described him to Reuters as “clear lower,” “respectable” and with “good concepts.” Critics say he’s a member of the out-of-touch elite who lacks political expertise and is performing as a puppet of get together chief and important backer Cartes.

“He isn’t a politician who needs a revolution, he needs evolution,” mentioned a businessman with investments in Paraguay who is aware of Pena personally, asking to not be named.

Pena’s political profession took off when protests in 2016 pressured then-President Cartes to desert plans to hunt an additional time period by amending the structure and to hand-pick Pena as his meant successor.

Members of the Colorado Celebration, nevertheless, had been unconvinced that Pena’s slick metropolis look and time in Washington would go down properly with voters and he misplaced out to present president Mario Abdo Benitez within the 2018 major election contest.

This time round Pena is the get together’s man. He’s backed as soon as extra by Cartes, who some see as the ability behind the throne, however who’s dealing with U.S. sanctions over corruption allegations which have harm his popularity.

Pena married his childhood sweetheart and have become a father for the primary time at 17. He studied economics in Paraguay and later attended New York’s Columbia College.

He labored as an economist on the central financial institution in Asuncion after which with the IMF in Washington, earlier than returning to Paraguay on the central financial institution board. He grew to become finance minister in 2015.

“He matured in a short time, being a younger father… he grew to become an grownup in a short time,” a former colleague informed Reuters. “Santi has lots of life expertise and is a pure negotiator.”

(Reporting by Lucinda Elliott and Daniela Desantis; enhancing by Diane Craft)

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