One Tweet Topples a President. Nobody Voted for It.

Horacio Cartes posted on X on November 5, and a president fell. That's the whole mechanism. Three days ago, the Colorado chief announced his party would vote for impeachment, wrote that he wouldn't stand with those who looted "public money, private money and the money of retirees," and distanced himself from Santiago Peña, the man he had groomed. Two days ago, the Senate voted for removal without a single vote against.

No referendum. No assembly of the people who pay for all of this. A couple of hours after the post, Pedro Alliana, the vice president, arrived at party headquarters. He and Cartes had a distant relationship and little exchange of words. The two met, in the base article's phrase, "to agree on who would hold power." The next day, Alliana took the presidential sash.

Who Has the Power

The account of how it happened reads like a ledger of favors and betrayals among a handful of men. Cartes added Peña to his cabinet as finance minister, brought him onto the board of his bank, and then anointed him presidential candidate. Peña, in the local reading, wanted to become the strongman of his own succession and tried to displace Cartes from his role as puppet master of power. Loyalists of Peña and Alliana had begun building their own movement inside the party: peñismo.

The fight started over a running mate. In April, Alliana made public his presidential aspiration for 2028, and both men backed him publicly. Then Cartes tried to impose Juan Carlos Baruja, head of the Ministry of Urbanism, Housing and Habitat, as vice presidential candidate. Alliana said no. Cartes flipped the ticket and left the vice president without a place. Peña sided with Alliana. On October 18, Cartes announced that his movement, Honor Colorado, would skip the 2027 primaries, a machine that had governed Colorado politics for 10 years suddenly with no one to nominate.

Who Gets Crushed

The Ueno Bank scandal did the dirty work, according to the base article. Local press reconstruction indicates Cartes had warned Peña that the bank could begin a downward spiral, and then stayed still and waited. When the scandal reached the presidential office, Cartes only had to order his people and add the dissidents. The retirees whose money Cartes invoked in his post are the stated victims of the looting, and none of them were consulted about its cleanup. Almost no one came out to defend the fallen president, which the report calls a rarity in the region.

The man who will now finish the term was pushed into the presidency by the same man who had removed him from the ticket. The United States Treasury sanctioned Cartes in 2023 for corruption. That's the figure whose tweet decided who governs a country.

What They're Calling "Order"

On October 14, Cartes sat down with Mario Abdo Benítez, an archenemy with whom he had exchanged accusations and even court complaints. The official explanation was concern about the health of the financial system. Abdo leads Fuerza Republicana, the backbone of the Colorado dissidence. That bloc set December as its deadline to choose a single candidate. Daniel Centurión, a deputy from that group, had judged it imprudent in mid-October even to mention impeachment. Weeks later, the old feud became an alliance, and impeachment became unanimous.

The Electoral Trap

The opposition's answer is another round of the same game. In 2023, Peña won with 42.74% against 27.48% for Efraín Alegre and 22.91% for Paraguayo Cubas. Combined, the losing candidates had more votes than the winner. Now the opposition is again divided: Miguel Prieto of Yo Creo, Liberals from the PLRA including Ricardo Estigarribia, Eduardo Nakayama and Celeste Amarilla, and Salyn Buzarquis offering herself as Prieto's running mate. The method, whether open primaries, polls, an alliance or a new concertación, remains unresolved.

Prieto believes the Colorado fracture and public weariness open a window. The base article's own caveat cuts against him: the Colorado Party has a long history of fighting in primaries and arriving united at general elections. Alliana will complete the term until August 15, 2028, but his own presidential dream is in limbo because the Constitution restricts that possibility for someone who has already held the office. The primaries in late 2027 will show, the article says, whether the puppet master again chooses the next president or whether someone cuts his strings. Nothing in that sentence belongs to the people being governed.