Opposition Senator Ignacio Iramain attributed the internal crisis in the National Republican Association (ANR), the Colorado Party, to a struggle over power, business and economic interests between the Honor Colorado movement, led by former President Horacio Cartes, and the circle around President Santiago Peña.
Iramain compared the conflict to the “Thucydides Trap,” a concept used to describe the clash between an established power and an emerging one seeking to replace it. In the senator’s assessment, the group linked to the government has accumulated enough political and economic strength to challenge the traditional leadership of Cartes’s movement within the state structure.
“It is not an ideological party; it is a business party,” Iramain said. He described Cartes’s movement as a “patrimonial, feudal and vertical” model and said the connection between the Colorado Party and the state fuels disputes over the distribution of concessions, privileges and benefits. According to the senator, the party ends up replacing the state by exploiting the population’s dependence in areas such as health, education and transport.
The senator cited the Hambre Cero school-meal program as a possible mechanism for building political support among governors. In Iramain’s formulation, the program’s distribution, combined with other government prerogatives and the executive branch’s decision-making power, could provide a social and political base for Peña’s group to try to displace the model associated with Cartes.
Iramain also linked the dispute to the credibility of the Central Bank of Paraguay (BCP), the country’s monetary authority. He mentioned the existence of a request for an investigation involving the institution, said he was awaiting answers and warned that a rapid loss of confidence could increase the risk of a bubble or financial rupture. These statements express the senator’s political assessment and do not establish an institutional conclusion about the BCP’s conduct.
The opposition senator acknowledged that fragmentation among his own sectors makes a coordinated response difficult. He said the opposition is focused on electoral preparations and has not yet managed to organize a political forum capable of analyzing the crisis in greater depth.
Representative Raúl Benítez avoided delving into the internal dispute within Honor Colorado and instead mocked the confrontation. “Really, I don’t want to comment on a fight among hens in a henhouse. The hens are agitated because the rooster is ‘somewhat senile,’” he said, referring to Cartes.
Benítez also responded to a statement by Vice President Pedro Alliana about the governing bloc. He said Alliana had referred to “80 princes” who would need to be flattered, but corrected the number: there are 43 Honor Colorado representatives. In the opposition lawmaker’s version, they are flatterers who vote in line on bills sent by the executive branch. Benítez added that lawmakers who rebel are usually “educated” in subsequent sessions by higher levels of the political structure.