Reply #17: Leftist former bishop set for victory in Paraguay election

[Octafish]

Lugo is a great guy. Above he's visiting Brasilia for some official reason a while back.

Leftist former bishop set for victory in Paraguay election

Oliver Balch in Asuncion and Rory Carroll in Caracas
guardian.co.uk, Friday April 18 2008 A

EXCERPT...

The bearded 57-year-old heads the Patriotic Alliance for Change, a coalition of centre and centre-left opposition parties, grassroots political movements, farmers groups and other social organisations.

SNIP...

Lugo has promised to give peasants more land and to charge Brazil more money for the power it imports from the Itaipu hydroelectric plant, which both countries jointly own.

He said if necessary he would take Brazil to the world court in the Hague to renegotiate a 1973 treaty that obliged Paraguay to sell surplus electricity to its giant neighbour at well below market value.

To avoid frightening conservative voters, the former bishop has called himself an independent, not a leftist, and has kept a distance from Venezuela's self-styled socialist revolutionary president, Hugo Chavez.

But he told the Guardian he was determined to tackle corruption and social exclusion.

"The gap between rich and poor is a scandal for Paraguayan society – it's a gap in which the few live at the banquet table while those at their side live in hunger."

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/18/1

He says he's resigned.
The Church says he's still on the rolls.
Must be like the Mafia or CIA:
You're never really out.