Colorado Party president and former Paraguayan president Horacio Cartes suggested that the governing party’s candidate for mayor of Asunción, Camilo Pérez, consider charging vehicles entering the capital. At a party event, Cartes asked whether Pérez intended to run the city only with revenue from licence fees and fines. He called for new sources of funding to transform Asunción, improve mobility and finance projects such as highways. The idea was presented as a campaign suggestion, not an approved policy.
Opposition candidate Soledad Núñez of the Together for Asunción alliance rejected the proposal at a meeting with women leaders of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA). Núñez said the city’s traffic, infrastructure and financial problems should be addressed through transparency and anti-corruption measures rather than a new charge on residents.
Núñez attributed the municipal government’s financial crisis to the alleged diversion of resources under former mayor Óscar “Nenecho” Rodríguez. She said funds from a loan known as G8 were available in December 2022 but were no longer recorded as available to the municipality in January 2023. Núñez linked the episode to the period before the general election in which Rodríguez’s wife, Lizarella Valiente, won a Senate seat. The claims of diversion, parallel funds and corruption are Núñez’s allegations and were not presented by the reviewed sources as judicial findings.
The debate comes during campaigning for the October 4, 2026 municipal elections. Núñez argues that interim mayor Luis Bello, Camilo Pérez and Lizarella Valiente represent continuity within the same political group. The toll dispute contrasts the governing party’s search for new revenue with the opposition’s call to prioritise spending controls and transparency.