Reuters/Asuncion


For Horacio Cartes, a millionaire cigarette and soft drink magnate who will be Paraguay’s next president, the challenge now is to run a country where most people can only dream of having a sliver of the wealth he does. The 56-year-old, who won election on Sunday with 46% of the vote and will take office in August, campaigned as a centre-right conservative at a time when most of Latin America is run by leftists.
Indeed, Cartes has touted a pro-business agenda that includes modernising the bloated state, which employs about 10% of all workers in Paraguay.
At a news conference on Monday, he said the state’s “main responsibility is to create an environment so that the private sector can work with calm.”
He also wants to attract up to $2.7bn in private capital to refurbish Paraguay’s airports and build new highways.
“We have to try to make investments in infrastructure without growing our mass of public workers,” he said.
Yet it may not be quite that easy. Cartes himself has acknowledged that, to be successful, he must also cater to Paraguay’s poor masses.
Poverty runs near 40% and per-capita gross domestic product was just $5,413 in 2011, the second-lowest in South America behind only Bolivia, according to International Monetary Fund data.
The country of 6.6mn has long been one of the region’s most politically unstable.
The last elected president, Fernando Lugo, was impeached last year following civil unrest. A political novice who never voted before 2009, Cartes will have strong support from Congress, but will also have to sustain the support of his centre-right Colorado Party, whose 60-year reign was interrupted by Lugo’s election in 2008.
On Sunday, the Colorado Party won control of the lower house and 19 of 45 Senate seats, preliminary election results showed. The Liberals had the second-biggest showing and leftist coalitions came in third place, with Lugo elected senator.
Cartes has promised to reform the Colorado Party, infamous for corruption and whose long period in power included General Alfredo Stroessner’s 1954-1989 dictatorship. But some in the party will likely push back against change.
“It’s very difficult to know what Cartes wants to do,” said political analyst Jose Carlos Rodriguez. “In principle, he has a neo-conservative project that gives a strong impulse to private companies and nothing to the state. But there’s a major inconsistency there and he’ll also have a powerful party that will demand certain benefits.”
Paraguay relies heavily on soybean and beef exports but it is also notorious for contraband trade and money laundering. Growth is seen at 13% this year after a severe drought caused a contraction in 2012, according to the central bank.