Paraguay 2022: Personalization within a strong party system

The year 2022 in Paraguay was marked by internal elections of political parties and scandals related to corruption, insecurity, and organized crime. Former president Horacio Cartes was elected as the new president of the governing ANR, and his candidate, Santiago Peña, won the ANR internal elections to become the ruling party’s presidential candidate in 2023. The article argues that in this context, the two traditional parties opted, paradoxically, for opposing strategies, albeit with strong personalistic elements in both cases. In a political system characterized by a combination of personalistic politics and strong party machines, Cartes achieved to dominate the political scene, despite accusations of corruption against him. We argue that he diverted the attention from the corruption charges to conservative anti-gender issues in the public agenda and used this discourse to win ANR internal elections in the second half of the year. We also show that the ossification of the Paraguayan party system had negative consequences for democracy in the country in 2022, related to the personalization of political parties, corruption scandals in politics, and increased public insecurity and drug trafficking. Although party system collapse is unlikely, we conclude the article by showing that Paraguay can offer some comparative lessons for democracy in other Latin American countries.