A young, photogenic candidate is groomed by a powerful former leader who is barred from running again.
Though from the middle-classes rather than the elite, and not even a member of the long-ruling Colorado Party, he is quickly pushed to the fore.
He rises to the nation’s highest office, chafing at the godfather figure who could topple him at any moment.
That description could easily fit Santiago Peña, the former president who was impeached on Friday amid protests and confined to a military base, as I write today with colleagues for The New York Times.
Peña stands accused of profiteering as Ueno, a bank that sucked in roughly $850m in state funds before imploding last week, leaving half the country of six million people with their neon-green accounts frozen.
But it could also apply to his replacement. As the cops swooped in on Peña’s Asunción mansion, TV news showed a split-screen of Pedro Alliana preparing to don the presidential sash as a soprano sang the national anthem.
Until recently known as the unobtrusive vice-president, Alliana distanced himself from his predecessor, vowing to be “firm” on those who “try to rob the future of Paraguayans.”
“Too much time has been spent overseas,” Alliana, 52, told Congress: a nod to Peña’s 70-plus foreign trips to drum up investment, gladhand with royalty, and butter up Donald Trump.
His priorities, he said, lie at home: stocking Paraguay’s threadbare hospitals with medicines, cutting government waste, and reimbursing savers plunged into panic when Ueno went belly-up.
But with barely 18 months until elections in April 2028, when Alliana will now no longer be able to run due to term limits, his caretaker presidency will be a lame duck from the get-go.
And all the signs are that Alliana — who once played basketball for the national squad — is even more the plaything of Horacio Cartes: the powerful ex-president who was instrumental in toppling his former prótegé.
Is Cartes now back in control?
Key to Peña’s downfall was the fact that he and his family held shares in Ueno — and other instruments linked to the broader Grupo Vázquez conglomerate — while in power. He divested from the shares, but kept the rest.
As per case files obtained by the Post, prosecutors say soft-touch regulators appointed by Peña meanwhile fuelled the bank’s radioactive rise and lied to lawmakers as it went under.
But Alliana also has financial dealings with Ueno: namely, a G4bn certificate of deposit (CDA) worth roughly $600,000, pledged as collateral against a similar-sized loan he took out from the bank. He says the deposit, and his parents’ savings in the bank, prove he had no idea it was about to go bust.
Critics say it’s impossible that he and other top Colorados were oblivious to what in official documents comes across as a massive, state-backed Ponzi scheme.
As a result, Alliana himself faced impeachment last week. Following a deal hammered out at ANR HQ under the man from Avenida España, the lower house threw out the motion by 48 votes to 30.
In his mind, say Cartes-watchers, that debt will need repaying. And it wasn’t the first time that the former president has, quite literally, saved Alliana’s skin.
The emerging team around Alliana all but confirms that the tobacco baron, briefly sanctioned by the Biden administration for mass corruption, will hold the whip hand over his administration …
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