By Laura Barros |
Asunción (EFE) for Mercosur as a bloc and will seek, internally, to “recover and return to the people” what was stolen by corruption.
Alegre, 60, was Fernando Lugo’s Minister of Public Works and Communications (2008-2012), the only president who has not belonged to the Colorado Party in the last seven decades. The also president of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA) is convinced that on this occasion his government proposal will also manage to break the near monopoly of power of coloradismo.
“We feel very, very happy with such joy, such effervescence for the change, so we are very confident that we are going to have an important victory on April 30,” he says with a wide smile, a few days before a vote in the that the few surveys disseminated through social networks predict a heart attack ending.
For the candidate of the National Concertation, a coalition of various opposition parties and movements, this is his third attempt to reach the Presidency. His rival from the ruling party, Santiago Peña, failed to overcome the Colorado Party primaries in the 2018 elections, which the current president of Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benítez, won.
Decrees and cabinet
Asked about the decrees that he would approve immediately to show the effectiveness of his government, Alegre assures that in this way he aspires to become “a president who is with the people”, which in his opinion means that he is seen to respond to the concerns of the population.
“We believe it is important to show, first of all, that we have the proposal that meets the needs of Paraguay,” he emphasizes.
Among the initiatives of his eventual Administration, he mentioned lowering the price of energy and the implementation of ambitious health, development and employment programs.
The fight against the mafia and the fight against corruption occupies a prominent place in his priorities. “We need people to understand that we will be firm and tough on corruption, that we are not going to negotiate, that we do not compromise,” he stresses.
In this context, he announced the creation of a secretariat “to recover and return to the people what was stolen.”
“Six million dollars a day is being stolen. More than 2,000 million dollars a year is the theft documented in its investigation by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)”, he argues to justify that it is not a mere complaint by a candidate in the campaign.
Mercosur
In the international arena, Alegre – by profession a lawyer and who was a deputy on two occasions and was also elected as a senator in 2008 – is “very optimistic” when it comes to entering into a negotiation with Brazil on the revision of one of the annexes to the founding treaty of the Itaipu dam, the second largest in the world and the first in Latin America, which Paraguay shares with the South American colossus.
“With Brazil we have an important alliance that we have to consolidate,” says Alegre, who describes the neighboring country as “a great ally of Paraguay.”
Regarding Itaipu, the largest hydroelectric plant in the world in accumulated production, which began operating in 1984, he assured that both Brazil and Paraguay have already advanced in many aspects. “We must not forget that part of the negotiations that we have to do now, have already been done by (Luiz Inácio) Lula (da Silva) and (Fernando) Lugo, that is, we are very advanced, the issues that we have to discuss are already quite advanced”.
Alegre, who in 2018 was 90,000 votes short of victory, declares himself “intensely committed to integration”, particularly with the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), a mechanism that Paraguay forms together with Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.
“We are firmly committed to integration. We have to take care of Mercosur. We do not agree to any kind of independent negotiations by the States. That could destroy this process, ”he says, alluding to the contacts that Uruguay maintains on its own with China. The National Concertation candidate is also in favor of closing the agreement with the European Union (EU).
Mercosur and the EU reached in June 2019, after 25 years of negotiations, a political agreement on the signing of a trade agreement between the two blocs still to be defined.
Relationship with Caracas
Asked about Venezuela, Alegre anticipates that, if he becomes president, he will restore relations with Caracas that Abdo Benítez broke in January 2019 after ignoring the electoral victory of Nicolás Maduro in May 2018.
“We have to have relationships with everyone. Why would we stop having with Venezuela? Because of discrepancies in your political model? Those are issues that, of course, we believe should be dealt with in Venezuela, resolved, but not stop having relations; on the contrary, if we can, we will help to consolidate democracy in Venezuela, but we should be there, ”he points out.
And without yet defining whether he will maintain the relationship with Taiwan if he wins (Paraguay is, along with Guatemala, the only Latin American country that recognizes the Taipei government), Alegre reiterates his criticism of the current scenario.
“Paraguay renounces having relations with China to have them with Taiwan. In other words, we are giving up one of the largest markets in the world,” the opposition candidate calls attention, for whom Taipei “is not making the same effort in return.”
If he wins on Sunday, Alegre would take office in three months, on August 15, a term that he considers “sufficient” to “have all the information, analysis” and “required dialogue” to “make a well-founded decision.”
In any case, any determination regarding relations between Paraguay and Taiwan will be adopted on the basis of “national interests,” he concludes.