Reply #11: Paraguay Election Too Close to Call

[EFerrari]

Paraguay Election Too Close to Call

From Tom Hennigan in Asuncion

After a vicious election campaign marked by character assassinations and accusations of fraud, Paraguayans went to the polls today in the first major test of the country's precarious 19-year old democracy.

All opinion polls indicate Paraguay's 2.8 million voters will elect Fernando Lugo, a former Catholic bishop, as their new president. If he wins he will be the first opposition leader to take power peacefully since the country's independence from Spain in 1811.

Mr Lugo heads a broad alliance that stretches across the political spectrum, built around the promise of change after decades of Colorado party rule. Under the Colorados Paraguay has become notorious for rampant corruption by the ruling class in what is one of the Americas' poorest nations.

But many voters are afraid that the ruling Colorado party, in power through dictatorship and democracy for almost 62 years, will use fraud to steal the result for their candidate Blanca Ovelar, a former education minister who would become the country's first woman president.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3785445.ece