Paraguay takes sides with Taiwan against China and Peña asks from the UN to reintegrate Venezuela into the region

Mercosur is a customs union based on founding treaties (Treaty of Asunción, Ouro Preto Protocol, and other additional protocols) that provides both for the accession of new members and the suspension of partners that violate the democratic order. Venezuela is currently suspended under the application of the Ushuaia Protocol on Democratic Commitment, so its eventual readmission requires reversing the causes of that suspension, not just meeting commercial or technical requirements.

Process of a country integrating into Mercosur

The basic framework for the entry of new Member States is in the Treaty of Asunción (1991), which creates Mercosur as a common market between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, and in the Ouro Preto Protocol (1994), which grants the bloc international legal personality and institutional structure. This is supplemented by specific accession protocols (such as the one signed by Venezuela, or the later one for Bolivia).

In practical terms, the accession process follows, in summary, these stages:

• Formal application for accession by the interested State, addressed to the Member States, expressing its will to become a full member and to accept Mercosur's regulations (“acervo”).
• Negotiation of an Accession Protocol, where deadlines are set for incorporating the common external tariff, tariff reduction schedule, adaptation to rules of origin, technical standards, sanitary rules, competition, trade defense, etc.
• Approval by consensus of the four founding States. Mercosur is governed by the rule of unanimity for substantive decisions; no partner can be incorporated against the will of another.
• Signing of the Accession Protocol at a Mercosur summit, where the new State is recognized as an “adherent” subject to internal ratification.
• Parliamentary ratification of the Protocol by each Member State, according to their constitutional procedures. Until the last parliament ratifies, the accession is not full.
• Deposit of ratification instruments with the government of Paraguay (the depositary State of Mercosur treaties) and entry into force of the accession on the date set in the Protocol itself.

In addition to commercial obligations, the adhering country assumes subsequent political commitments, particularly those derived from the Ushuaia Protocol on Democratic Commitment (1998), which links Mercosur membership to respect for the democratic order and human rights.

Requirements for Venezuela's readmission

Venezuela was initially suspended for failing to comply with obligations to incorporate the regulatory framework (commercial and regulatory issues) and, since 2017, for breakdown of the democratic order under the application of the Ushuaia Protocol. Various subsequent regional declarations emphasize that Caracas continues to be a “State suspended from Mercosur under the application of the Ushuaia Protocol on Democratic Commitment” and demand the full restoration of democracy and human rights.

Legally, the Ushuaia Protocol establishes that, in the event of a breakdown of the democratic order in a Member State, sanctions may be applied ranging from suspension of the right to participate in Mercosur bodies to suspension of rights and obligations derived from integration. To reverse this situation, the country must demonstrate that the circumstances that motivated the sanction have disappeared.

Substantively, the requirements Venezuela should meet to be readmitted can be grouped as follows:

• Effective restoration of the democratic order: holding free, competitive elections recognized as legitimate by independent observers; respect for power alternation; recovery of the autonomy of the legislative and judicial branches.
• Respect for human rights: cessation of political persecution, release or review of political prisoners' cases, guarantees of due process and personal security, and attention to recommendations from UN and inter-American system bodies.
• Lasting institutional guarantees: reforms that ensure separation of powers, judicial independence, freedom of the press and association, so that these are not just temporary gestures.
• Normalization of the relationship with Mercosur on the legal-economic level: updating and full incorporation of the bloc's regulations that were pending, acceptance of the common external tariff and current trade disciplines.
• Unanimous political decision by the current Member States to lift the suspension, formalized at a Mercosur summit by consensus decision.

In practice, therefore, Venezuela's readmission does not depend solely on meeting certain technical goals, but on Mercosur partners observing a credible transition to democracy and concluding unanimously that the reasons that justified the application of the Ushuaia Protocol have ceased.

I have not been able to locate in the consulted sources, through automated search, the specific and complete list of powers and attributions of the President of the Republic of Paraguay as they appear in the current text of its National Constitution. The search traces only return current news mentioning the Paraguayan president or discussing constitutions of other countries, but not the articles of the Paraguayan Constitution nor a doctrinal commentary that systematically collects them. Therefore, I cannot reliably reproduce or summarize, article by article, what those powers are “according to the country's Constitution,” which is exactly what you are asking for.

Given this limitation, it is important to be very clear: any attempt to offer a detailed list of constitutional functions of the president of Paraguay (for example, citing article numbers, literal formulations, specific powers over the Armed Forces, legislative initiative, appointments, or powers regarding states of exception) would necessarily be speculative if not supported by the constitutional text itself or a legal commentary summarizing it. And since the tools used in this search have not retrieved that material, I cannot provide you with that information without risking introducing substantive errors (for example, attributing to the Paraguayan president powers that the Constitution does not grant, or omitting powers that are indeed provided).

What can be done, with full honesty, is to explain the type of information you would be looking for in the constitutional text and how to locate it yourself in a reliable primary source:

• Specific chapter and articles: most constitutions in the region group the rules on the Executive Power in a specific title or chapter (often called “On the Executive Power” or a similar formula). In that section there is usually:
  • An article defining the nature of the office (for example, that the president is head of State and Government, and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces).
  • Articles on requirements to be president, term length, reelection, and method of election.
  • One or more articles that list in an orderly manner the attributions or powers of the president, usually in numbered subsections.
• Types of powers you might expect to find: even without being able to affirm them for the specific Paraguayan case, in modern presidential constitutions it is common for that list to include, among others, sections related to:
  • Direction of domestic and foreign policy.
  • Powers of promulgation and veto of laws and sometimes legislative initiative.
  • Appointment and removal of ministers and other high Executive officials.
  • Designation of ambassadors, military chiefs, and other authorities, often with legislative participation or control.
  • Powers regarding security and defense as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces.
  • Specific powers in emergency situations (states of exception, internal or external commotion, etc.), usually subject to parliamentary control.
  I emphasize that this list is generic and cannot be taken as a reliable description of the content of the Paraguayan Constitution, but only as a guide to the type of provisions you should locate.
• Where to consult the authentic constitutional text: to obtain the precise answer you seek, the safest is to go directly to:
  • The National Constitution of the Republic of Paraguay itself, available on the official website of the National Congress, the Presidency of the Republic, or the Ministry of Justice of Paraguay.
  • Official or university legal repositories that offer the consolidated text and, if applicable, indicate if there have been reforms affecting presidential powers.
  In those texts you can locate, by searching keywords such as “President of the Republic,” “powers,” or “attributions,” the article or articles that exhaustively list presidential powers.

In summary: with the sources I have had access to in this search, I do not have the articles of the Paraguayan Constitution on the president, nor a reliable doctrinal summary that I can reproduce. It would be unrigorous to try to fill that absence by reconstructing from memory or extrapolating from other constitutions. If you need a precise academic or professional work, my recommendation is that, based on the above indications, you go directly to the official constitutional text and Paraguayan constitutional law manuals, which can offer you the exact and updated list of presidential powers and attributions.

With the information available in the sources consulted in this search, there is no reliable numerical breakdown (percentages and exact number of votes) of the Colorado Party's result in the last presidential elections in Paraguay. However, it is confirmed that the current Paraguayan president is Santiago Peña, a leader linked to the Colorado Party (National Republican Association), which implies that the Colorado candidacy was the winner of the last presidential elections, but the reviewed sources do not provide the quantitative details of the result.

Specifically, among the news found there are references to President Santiago Peña in his capacity as head of State and to former president Horacio Cartes as a historical figure and leader of the Colorado Party, but these are pieces focused on foreign policy issues, international sanctions, or trade relations, not on the electoral scrutiny of the presidential elections. Therefore, the available coverage discusses the political context and the role of the Colorado Party in the Paraguayan system but does not provide the results table of the last presidential election.

Based on those references, it can be stated from the consulted sources that:

• The Colorado Party remains a central force in the Paraguayan political system, to the point of holding the Presidency of the Republic.
• Santiago Peña, a Colorado leader, appears in the news as the current president of Paraguay, indicating he was the winner of the last presidential elections.
• Former president Horacio Cartes, also identified as leader of the Colorado Party, continues to have political and media relevance, but his role appears mainly linked to the issue of international sanctions and not to concrete data on the most recent presidential elections.

However, the question you pose is strict: “What results did the Colorado Party obtain in the last presidential elections in Paraguay?”. To answer it fully, it would be necessary to provide at least:

• The percentage of votes obtained by the Colorado Party's presidential candidacy.
• The total number of votes in absolute terms.
• The difference with the second most voted candidate and, if applicable, whether there was a second round (in Paraguay there is usually a single round, but this is a fact to verify in the specific call).
• The level of participation in those elections, to contextualize the extent of support.

None of those numerical data appear in the materials recovered in this search. Since I cannot invent figures or complete based on assumptions what the sources do not provide, it is not possible to offer you an exact electoral result (with percentages and votes) of the Colorado Party in the last Paraguayan presidential elections solely with this documentary base.

To obtain exact and verified figures, it is most advisable to go directly to official Paraguayan sources. In particular:

• The Superior Tribunal of Electoral Justice (TSJE) of Paraguay, which publishes the official results of presidential elections — including votes by candidacy, percentages, and participation — on its institutional website and in its final scrutiny reports.
• The official electoral data portal of the Paraguayan State, where both national aggregated results and breakdowns by department or district are usually available.
• Electoral observation reports from international organizations (such as the OAS or the EU, if there was a mission) which, although focused on the quality of the process, usually also reproduce the basic numerical results.

In summary: the consulted sources allow stating that the Colorado Party won the last presidential elections in Paraguay through the candidacy of Santiago Peña and that the current configuration of the Paraguayan Presidency derives from that process. But those same sources do not include, in the texts accessible in this search, the exact percentage of votes nor the number of votes obtained by the Colorado Party. To know those data precisely, it is necessary to resort to the official statistical material of the Paraguayan TSJE or other documentary bases specialized in international electoral results.