ASUNCION, Paraguay — For 61 years, the Colorado Party's recipe
for holding on to power in this impoverished country has never
failed.
First, the world's longest-ruling political party built
an army of loyal supporters with a patronage system that
obliterated any distinction between the government and the
party. The Colorados then created a near-religious
mythology that equated defying the party with treason. If
all that didn't work, the party simply stole
elections.
In the run-up to Paraguay's general elections this Sunday,
however, the recipe no longer seems be working. Polls suggest that
the Colorados will be ousted from power and that the new president
will be former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo, who was a political
nobody two years ago.
It's an amazing turnaround for a party that's been in power
longer than most people in this nation of 6.8 million can
remember. A Lugo victory also would continue a regional
trend that's seen leftist or outsider candidates end decades of
rule by establishment elites, which in Paraguay includes the
35-year regime of dictator Alfredo Stroessner.
While many fear that the Colorado Party may once again cheat its
way to victory on Sunday, expectations for change are so high that
any revelation of fraud could ignite political chaos, including
street violence, said analyst Alfredo Boccia Paz.
"There have never been distinctions between what's the party and
what's the electoral system," Boccia Paz said. "On election day,
it's like you're competing against the Paraguayan state if you're
in the opposition. But there's a big fatigue factor now with all of
this. There's a big demand for change."
The latest poll by the newspaper Ultima Hora found Lugo winning
34.5 percent of the vote, with the Colorado candidate, former
Education Minister Blanca Ovelar, in third place with 28.5 percent.
Paraguay has neither a run-off nor a re-election system, so whoever
wins the most votes Sunday will serve one five-year term as
president.
Public discontent with both the Colorados and the state of the
country has fueled the party's misfortunes this year, polls show.
Conflicts within the party also have crippled its electoral
machinery.
Slightly smaller in area than California, this land-locked
country is South America's second poorest, with about a third of
its residents living in poverty.
The country also is known as a haven for fugitive Nazis,
smugglers and drug traffickers, and it ranked in the 25th
percentile of the world's most corrupt countries in an index
compiled last year by the watchdog group Transparency
International.
For poor Paraguayans such as Trifina Escobar, a housewife in the
capital of Asuncion, more than 60 years of Colorado rule is to
blame, and she said that many of her poor neighbors planned to vote
for Lugo this Sunday.
"We are in bad shape, and we need change," the 59-year-old said.
"We have people who don't eat, who are poor, poor, poor, people who
live in tents.
"But Paraguayans are so stupid that if you give them
just some sugar during election season, they stop being
Paraguayans. They vote against their interests."
Lugo has captured disillusioned voters by playing up his story
as a former bishop who worked for years in the country's poorest
state and entered politics only after he was invited to speak at a
massive anti-government rally in March 2006.
The 58-year-old declared his candidacy last year after he left
the priesthood, and he's led in the polls ever since. He leads a
coalition of parties, the Patriotic Alliance for Change that spans
the ideological spectrum.
In a Friday press conference, he said that he'd try to
renegotiate unpopular energy treaties with neighboring Brazil and
Argentina and redistribute land more equitably to peasant farmers.
He said that Paraguay, under his leadership, wouldn't "fall into
submission to any other bigger country."
Seizing on such positions, critics have speculated that Lugo
would ally himself with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other
leftist governments that have denounced U.S. influence in the
region. As a bishop, he was a proponent of the Roman Catholic
Church's leftist Liberation Theology wing.
Lugo rejected such speculation, saying, "We believe in our own
project with our own policies."
Sen. Juan Manuel Marcos, a leader of Lugo's coalition, said that
fixing the country's corruption-saddled government would be a top
priority for a Lugo administration.
"The size of Paraguay's economy is tiny compared to what it
could be," Marcos said. "Nobody wants to invest here because
there's no legal security here."
Colorado leaders also have promised change even as they defend
current President Nicanor Duarte Frutos and decades of one-party
rule.
Sen. Martin Chiola, a Colorado leader, pointed out that the
country's economy grew by 6.4 percent last year, largely fueled by
rising soybean exports, and he predicted more growth.
"The macroeconomic situation is good, and our house is in
order," Chiola said. "We just need more social programs that can
bring up people's quality of life."
Nonetheless, Chiola and other Colorado leaders have fretted
about their party's chances on Sunday, and they've shifted the
Colorados' political apparatus into high gear.
In Asuncion, thousands of public employees have hit the streets
flying the party's crimson flag to show their support for Colorado
candidates. The federal government commands a bloated bureaucracy
of some 200,000 people, with the vast majority belonging to the
Colorado Party.
The party also runs hundreds of neighborhood chapters that
deliver government aid and even operate college dormitories that
are open only to party members.
While attending a Colorado rally in the central Paraguayan town
of Carapegua this week, security guard Carlos Ivarola said the
party has always taken care of him and his family. Four years ago,
the party even paid for a coffin and a funeral when his
mother-in-law died.
"We will never change our party nor our church," Ivarola said.
"It's unthinkable that we could lose."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/34161.html
Your time will come PAP.
49 years in power.
After Lee Kuan Yew dies, your turn is next.
You cannot escape your fate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch
