Paraguay's Santiago Pena: Fresh Face Of Institutional Power

Quick to smile and described as affable, Paraguay's new President Santiago Pena, 44, is the fresh face of an old institution -- the conservative Colorado Party that has ruled the South American country for nearly eight decades.

An economist and former finance minister, Pena managed to keep the party's hegemony intact despite deep divisions over corruption claims against some of its top leaders, including his own political mentor.

This was Pena's first stab at the presidency, and he had been lagging in opinion polls to center-left rival Efrain Alegre.

The closest he had ever come to the top job until now was in 2017, when he lost the party primary to the man he will now replace after a constitutionally limited single term: Mario Abdo Benitez.

Tall and athletic, Pena is widely described as a technocrat with a brilliant academic career, but little political experience.

The former IMF economist and central bank board member entered politics under former president Horacio Cartes, who is under US sanctions for alleged corruption.

Pena served as finance minister under Cartes, who is the leader of the Colorado Party.

His detractors describe Pena as Cartes' secretary.

Alegre went even further, alluding to Pena as the "servant" of Cartes and a party the center-leftist had sought to paint as a corrupt institution.

But Pena is nonchalant about the criticism.

"He is very serene, his peace of mind is impressive," a collaborator told AFP.

In the living room of his elegant home in Asuncion are photographs of Pena with his wife Leticia Ocampos, whom he married after she became pregnant when they were teenagers.

That son, today 26, was later joined by a sister who is 17 -- as old as Pena was when he became a father for the first time.

"It was a difficult time in my life," Pena once told an interviewer about early parenthood.

"But it led me to build on very solid principles of commitment, of responsibility, of honesty, of integrity, of knowing that there are people who depend on you. And without realizing it, when I was 17, I began to develop a vocation of service," said Pena.

He said both families helped the young couple and encouraged him to continue studying, which he did at Columbia University in New York.

Pena is a defender of what he describes as traditional family values: against abortion and gay marriage.

For him, a family is comprised of "mother, father and children."

Unlike Alegre, Pena has said he will preserve diplomatic relations with Taiwan despite demands in the agricultural and livestock industries to open the export market to China.

However, he told AFP he would move Paraguay's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Paraguay had previously moved its embassy in 2018, under Cartes, but reversed its decision within months, provoking anger from Israel which closed its own mission in Asuncion in retaliation.

"Yes, I would go back to Jerusalem," Pena told AFP before Sunday's vote.

Moving an embassy to Jerusalem is highly contentious. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital while Palestinians view east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

Pena has vowed to create 500,000 jobs, without saying how he will achieve this.

He had previously come under fire for praising the "stability" he said dictator Alfredo Stroessner (1954-89) had brought to the country, though "unfortunately, many freedoms and human rights were curtailed."

Up to 3,000 people were killed or disappeared under the Stroessner regime.