Paraguay president-elect pledges to continue formal ties with Taiwan
ROC Central News Agency
05/02/2023 12:26 PM
Taipei, May 2 (CNA) President-elect Santiago Peña of Paraguay has pledged to continue to strengthen ties with Taiwan after winning his country's presidential election Sunday in a race in which Paraguay's formal recognition of Taiwan was at stake.
In retweeting President Tsai Ing-wen's (蔡英文) congratulatory message, the candidate of Paraguay's ruling Colorado Party expressed his thanks to Taiwan's leader.
"Thank you very much for the good wishes President Tsai Ing-wen! We are going to continue strengthening our historic ties of brotherhood and cooperation between our countries," Peña said in a Spanish language tweet.
In her earlier tweet, Tsai congratulated Peña on his victory.
"I look forward to furthering our countries' longstanding relationship and to seeing the government and people of Paraguay prosper under your leadership," Tsai said in the tweet.
Peña, a 44-year-old economist and former finance minister who has pledged to maintain Paraguay's six decades of diplomatic relations with Taiwan, grabbed 43 percent of the votes in Sunday's election to win a comfortable victory against a split opposition.
His main center-left rival Efrain Alegre, who campaigned on a pledge to switch Paraguay's allegiance to China, garnered 27 percent of the votes, and populist Paraguayo Cubas received 23 percent.
The result eased fears that Taiwan, officially named the Republic of China (ROC), would lose another formal diplomatic ally to the People's Republic of China (PRC) after seeing the number of states officially recognizing it dwindle to 13 in recent years.
Paraguay, the ROC's only diplomatic ally in South America, has had official relations with the ROC since 1957.
The PRC does not allow countries to recognize both it and the ROC because it considers Taiwan to be part of its territory, making Taiwan's fight for formal diplomatic allies a zero-sum game.
The most recent Taiwan ally to defect to the PRC was Honduras in late March. It was the ninth diplomatic ally, and fifth in Latin America, that Taiwan has lost to Beijing since Tsai took office in May 2016.
Meanwhile, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Jeff Liu (劉永健) said Tuesday that the ministry was planning to send representatives to attend the new leader's inauguration to be held in August.
He would not disclose, however, if Tsai or Vice President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) would lead the delegation.
He also said ROC ambassador to Paraguay Jose Han (韓志正) met with Peña in person on Monday night to relay Tsai's congratulatory messages to the president-elect.
(By Joseph Yeh)
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