Opposition's Soledad Núñez Wins Asunción, Ending Colorado Party's Grip on Paraguay's Capital
Centrist edges ruling party's Camilo Pérez 47.78% to 45.98% in a vote seen as a test before the 2028 general election
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File photo: Soledad Núñez, then a former Paraguayan housing minister, at a World Economic Forum meeting in Dalian, China, July 2019. Photo: World Economic Forum / Greg Beadle, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Opposition candidate Soledad Núñez has won the mayor's race in Paraguay's capital, Asunción, defeating the ruling Colorado Party in municipal elections widely seen as a midterm test for the right-wing government ahead of the 2028 general election, Reuters reported.
With 99.92% of votes counted, Núñez, of the opposition coalition Alianza Juntos Por Asunción, had 47.78% of the vote, while Colorado candidate Camilo Pérez won 45.98%, according to Reuters and the Spanish news agency EFE.
A narrow win in the capital
The Colorado Party had controlled the Asunción mayor's office since 2019, Reuters said. Pérez, who is president of the Paraguayan Olympic Committee according to EFE, told reporters on Sunday night that he would await an official review of the results on Monday.
Núñez, a civil engineer who was a vice presidential candidate in 2023, celebrated her victory on Sunday night, telling supporters that the people had won, as the crowd chanted "sí se pudo" (yes, we could), EFE reported.
Turnout in Asunción reached 61.75%, up from 59.65% in the 2021 municipal elections, according to EFE's figures from the preliminary results transmission system, known as TREP.
A city in debt
Núñez inherits a municipality burdened by millions of dollars in debt obligations, missed interest payments, stalled public works and infrastructure problems, Reuters reported.
EFE noted that the current mayor, Luis Bello, has been in office since August 2025, after his party colleague Óscar Rodríguez resigned amid an administrative intervention that revealed the city's financial "illiquidity".
Opposition sweeps Ciudad del Este
In Paraguay's second-largest city, Ciudad del Este, opposition candidate Dani Mujica of the Yo Creo movement won 72.83% of the vote, well ahead of the Colorado candidate on 23.8%, with all votes counted, Reuters reported. The city is a key commercial hub in the tri-border area with Argentina and Brazil.
Yo Creo's leader, the centrist Miguel Prieto, is expected to seek the presidency in 2028. Analysts see the 37-year-old lawyer as a rising political force capable of mounting one of the strongest challenges in years to the Colorado Party's long dominance of Paraguayan politics, according to Reuters.
Test for Peña's party
The elections were seen as a gauge of support for the Colorado Party, also known as the National Republican Association (ANR), to which President Santiago Peña belongs, ahead of the 2028 presidential vote, EFE said.
The party has governed Paraguay almost without interruption for the past 79 years, through periods of both dictatorship and democracy, according to EFE.
