By Daniela Desantis and Lucinda Elliott
ASUNCION (Reuters) – Paraguayan opposition leader Efrain Alegre can trace some of the fire for his 2023 presidential run to three weeks he spent behind bars two years ago on what he says were trumped up corruption charges related to campaign financing.
The 60-year-old veteran politician and lawyer, who was narrowly defeated at the ballot box in 2018 – his third attempt at the presidency – is pushing hard to unseat the ruling conservative Colorado Party in Sunday’s vote. Some opinion polls have shown him ahead.
Alegre said his arrest, which he blamed on judicial corruption and what he called a “mafia” in government, fired up his sense of injustice and made him determined to take the ruling party on at the ballot box.
“I was so calm because we had defeated the mafia, because even while I was in prison, people knew that I was the object of an injustice,” he told Reuters at his home on the outskirts of Asuncion.
His party had been accused of presenting a false invoice to Paraguay’s electoral court related to 2018 campaign expenses.
If elected, Alegre has vowed to clean up corruption in government, accusations of which have dogged the Colorado Party.
The U.S. Treasury in January imposed sanctions on party head Horacio Cartes and Vice President Hugo Velazquez, citing “rampant corruption.” They deny the charges.
The election is seen as a two-horse race between Alegre and Santiago Pena, the ruling party candidate who has the backing of the powerful Colorado political machine but must shake off voter anger at the graft allegations leveled at his party.
Alegre has said he would cut public sector red tape and establish diplomatic ties with China that would open up its huge market to Paraguay’s soy and cattle farmers.
Alegre represents a broad center-left coalition of independent parties and movements. He ran as a presidential candidate unsuccessfully in 2013 and again in 2018.
POLITICS ‘IN THE BLOOD’
If elected as Paraguay’s first non-Colorado president in over a decade, Alegre proposes a “new energy policy” to get more out of the country’s huge hydroelectric power plants at Yacyreta and Itaipu, shared with neighbors Argentina and Brazil.
“We need to use energy to develop our country. Paraguay does not win with this rentier policy, whereby we receive dollars for our energy that end up in the pockets of some politicians or are caught up in ballooning bureaucracy,” he said.
During his campaign Alegre pledged to reassess Paraguay’s six-decade-old diplomatic relations with Taiwan and said he favors opening up to China, hoping to boost farm exports.
At his home, however, a framed picture of him receiving a medal from a Taiwanese official hangs just under his certificate as a lawyer, underscoring how ditching Taiwan ties may not be simple, especially without congressional support.
“If he does not command a Senate majority this will reduce room for maneuver as president. I think it won’t be easy for him,” said sociologist Luis Ortiz from the National University of Asuncion. Alegre lacked charisma but was experienced and “knows the inner workings of the state,” he added.
Alegre has served as a congressman and senator and was public works minister under leftist President Fernando Lugo, who was removed in a controversial impeachment trial in 2012. Alegre voted in favor of ousting Lugo, a decision that several of his allies on the left still question.
Those who know Alegre say he is a “politico de raza” – that politics runs in his blood.
“I love what I do,” he said. “After being president I would continue helping but in a more withdrawn way, at a greater distance. But I will never give (politics) up.”
(Reporting by Daniela Desantis and Lucinda Elliott; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Rosalba O’Brien)
