Paraguay, officially the Republic of Paraguay, is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. It has a population of around 6.1 million, nearly 2.3 million of whom live in the capital and largest city of Asunción, and its surrounding metro area.
Politics of Paraguay takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic. The National Constitution mandates a separation of powers in three branches. Executive power is exercised solely by the President. Legislative power is vested in the two chambers of the National Congress. The Judiciary power is vested on Tribunals and Courts of Civil Law and a nine-member Supreme Court of Justice, all of them independent of the executive and the legislature.
Óscar Nicanor Duarte Frutos is a Paraguayan lawyer, journalist and politician who served as the 47th President of Paraguay from 2003 to 2008. A member of the Colorado Party, he became the central figure of Paraguayan politics during his presidency.
The National Republican Association – Colorado Party is a conservative political party in Paraguay, founded on 11 September 1887 by Bernardino Caballero. Since 1947, the colorados, as they are known, has been dominant in Paraguayan politics and has controlled the presidency since 1948 –notwithstanding a brief interruption between 2008 and 2013– as well as having a majority in both chambers of Congress and department governorships.
Lino César Oviedo Silva was a Paraguayan army officer and politician, who was the leader of the National Union of Ethical Citizens, which split from the Colorado Party in 2002.
The Authentic Radical Liberal Party is a liberal and radical political party in Paraguay. The party is a full member of Liberal International. The liberales, as they are known, are the leading opposition to the dominant conservative Colorado Party. They have taken this position since the end of the Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship in 1989. They are the political successors of the Liberal Party, which traces its history back to 10 July 1887.
The 2008 United States Senate elections were held on November 4, 2008, with 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate being contested. Thirty-three seats were up for regular elections; the winners were eligible to serve six-year terms from January 3, 2009, to January 3, 2015, as members of Class 2. There were also two special elections, the winners of those seats would finish the terms that ended on January 3, 2013. The presidential election, which was won by Democrat Barack Obama, elections for all House of Representatives seats; elections for several gubernatorial elections; and many state and local elections occurred on the same date.
The National Union of Ethical Citizens is a right-wing populist political party in Paraguay.
Luis Alberto Castiglioni Soria is a Paraguayan politician. He was Vice President of Paraguay for the Colorado Party from 2003 to 2007.
General elections were held in Paraguay on 20 April 2008. Elections were held for the presidency, 45 senators, 80 representatives, 17 governors and Paraguay's members in the Mercosur Parliament.
Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez is a Paraguayan politician and laicized Catholic bishop who was President of Paraguay from 2008 to 2012. Previously, he was a Roman Catholic priest and bishop, serving as Bishop of the Diocese of San Pedro from 1994 to 2005. He was elected as president in 2008, an election that ended 61 years of rule by the Colorado Party.
General elections were held in Paraguay on 21 April 2013. They resulted in a victory for the Colorado Party, which had ruled the country for 60 years before losing power in 2008. The presidential elections were won by the Colorado Party's Horacio Cartes, who defeated Efraín Alegre of the Paraguay Alegre alliance. The Colorado Party also won the most seats in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.
Fernando Lugo, elected President of Paraguay in 2008, was impeached and removed from office by the Congress of Paraguay in June 2012. On 21 June the Chamber of Deputies voted 76 to 1 to impeach Lugo, and the Senate removed him from office the following day, by 39 votes to 4, resulting in Vice President Federico Franco, who had broken with Lugo, becoming President. Lugo contends he was denied due process because he did not have enough time to prepare a defense. A number of Latin American governments declared the proceeding was effectively a coup d'état. Lugo himself formally accepted the impeachment, but called it a "parliamentary coup".
Pedro Efraín Alegre Sasiain is a Paraguayan politician, lawyer, and university professor, who served as president of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party from 2016 to 2023. For ten years he was the most prominent leader of the opposition to the Colorado Party, running unsuccessfully against its candidates in the presidential elections of 2013, 2018 and 2023.
On 31 March 2017, a series of protests began in Paraguay, during which demonstrators set fire to the Congress building. The demonstrations occurred in response to a constitutional amendment that would permit President Horacio Cartes to run for re-election, a move described by the opposition as "a coup". One protester was killed in Paraguay's capital, Asunción, after being hit by a shotgun blast by police. Several protesters, politicians and journalists, as well as police, were reported injured, including one lower-house deputy who had to undergo surgery after being injured by rubber bullets. On 17 April, President Cartes announced that he was resigning from any possible candidacy for a second presidential term. On 26 April, the Chamber of Deputies of Paraguay rejected the proposed constitutional amendment for presidential re-election.
The conservative wave, or blue tide, was a right-wing political phenomenon that occurred in the mid-2010s to the early 2020s in Latin America as a direct reaction to the pink tide.
Santiago Peña Palacios is a Paraguayan politician and economist who is the 52nd and current president of Paraguay since 2023. In addition to his political career, Peña has served on leadership boards for the Central Bank of Paraguay and Banco Amambay. He has also taught economics at the Catholic University of Asunción, and has published research papers on monetary policy and finance.
The Marzo paraguayo was a political crisis that occurred in Paraguay because of the assassination of the then-Vice President Luis María Argaña on 23 March 1999. The opposition blamed the then-President, Raúl Cubas Grau, and also the strongman of Paraguayan politics of that time, Lino Oviedo, for the assassination. Argaña's assassination provoked a series of demonstrations by opponents and supporters to Oviedo and the Cubas government, which culminated in clashes in which seven demonstrators opposed to the government died, which resulted in the resignation of Cubas from the presidency.
Lilian Graciela Samaniego González is a Paraguayan pharmaceutical chemist and politician of the Colorado Party. She has been a member of the Senate of Paraguay since 2004.
Presidential elections were held in South Korea on 9 March 2022. Under the South Korean constitution, presidents are restricted to a single five-year term, meaning that incumbent president Moon Jae-in was ineligible to run for a second term. Opposition candidate Yoon Suk Yeol of the People Power Party won the election, defeating candidate Lee Jae-myung of the incumbent Democratic Party.
