By Lucinda Elliott and Daniela Desantis
ASUNCION (Reuters) – Paraguay’s conservative ruling party presidential candidate Santiago Pena will need all the composure he has from a journey as a teenage father to the International Monetary Fund as he faces down an opposition challenge at the ballot box on Sunday.
The 44-year-old former finance minister is trying to navigate a political maelstrom, with corruption allegations engulfing his party, internal divisions, and rising pressure from farmers over his plans to maintain ties with Taiwan.
But Pena, who has powerful party backing, is able to keep a cool head amid the tumult, his supporters say.
“I think what characterizes him is that he has infinite tranquility,” said Lea Gimenez, who served as Pena’s deputy when he was finance minister and was later finance minister herself.
“Even during this election campaign, which has been so long because we have been in the process for almost a year and a half, I have not seen him once lose his temper. I don’t know where he gets that strength, that temperance.”
Pena will face a cluster of candidates in a single-round vote. Opinion polls suggest either Pena or center-left opposition leader Efrain Alegre could triumph and most analysts predict a close race.
“Santi,” as he is often known, has pledged business-friendly policies that focus on job creation, keeping taxes low and attracting foreign investment.
“I want Paraguay to have a much greater international role, to be a much more important player on the international stage,” Pena told Reuters in an interview in January.
Throughout the campaign the Colorado Party candidate has vowed to extend Paraguay’s decades-long diplomatic relations with Taiwan, despite pressures to open up to China and its huge consumer demand for soybeans and beef.
Those who know Pena described him to Reuters as “clean cut,” “decent” and with “good ideas.” Others cite a contemporary mindset and steady hand. Critics say he is a member of the out-of-touch elite who lacks political experience and is acting as a puppet of party leader and close ally Horacio Cartes.
“He is not a politician who wants a revolution, he wants evolution,” said a businessman with investments in Paraguay who knows Pena personally, asking not to be named.
‘LIFE EXPERIENCE’
Pena’s political career took off when protests in 2016 forced then-President Cartes to abandon plans to seek an extra term by amending the constitution and to hand-pick Pena as his intended successor.
Members of the Colorado Party, however, were unconvinced that Pena’s slick city appearance and time in Washington would go down well with voters and he lost out to current president Mario Abdo Benitez in the 2018 primary election contest.
This time around Pena is the party’s man. He is backed once more by Cartes, who some see as the power behind the throne, but who is facing U.S. sanctions over corruption allegations that have hurt his reputation.
Pena married his childhood sweetheart and became a father for the first time at 17. He studied economics in Paraguay and later attended New York’s Columbia University.
“He matured very quickly, being a young father… he became an adult very quickly,” a former colleague told Reuters. “Santi has a lot of life experience and is a natural negotiator.”
He worked as an economist at the central bank in Asuncion and then with the IMF in Washington, before returning to Paraguay on the central bank board. He became finance minister in 2015.
“Many believe that I’m a young man… but I’ve been in the public sector for years,” he said in an interview with regional media. “I could be doing my career abroad, but I decided to come back because I love my country and I want to work for it.”
(Reporting by Lucinda Elliott and Daniela Desantis; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Rosalba O’Brien)
