Exit polls point to new leader in Paraguay
Four exit polls projected former Roman Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo winning enough votes in Sunday's election to end six decades of one-party rule in Paraguay, but his rival disputed the polls and vowed to wait for official results. Lugo, sometimes called "the bishop of the poor," campaigned on a platform of helping the poor and indigenous, and ending the Colorado Party's 61-year rule in this landlocked, nation. His ruling party rival, Blanca Ovelar, was seeking to become Paraguay's first female president. Supporters of Lugo, 56, set off fireworks in celebration after the exit poll results were released and the candidate briefly appeared at his campaign headquarters before a crush of cheering sympathizers. "Ole, ole! Lugo triumph!" they chanted. He did not address the crowd. Ovelar refused to concede, saying the polls were concentrated in urban areas and that her own polling in rural areas showed her garnering more votes. "We are going to await the provisional official results from election authorities," said Ovelar, a 50-year-old former education minister and protege of outgoing President Nicanor Duarte. One exit poll for ABC newspaper and Radio Nandutti had Lugo with 43 percent of the vote, Ovelar with 37 percent and former army chief Lino Oviedo with 16 percent. Another exit poll by Canal 9 television put Lugo at 41 percent, Ovelar with 38 percent and Oviedo with 16 percent. A third poll by Telefuturo television and Ultima Hora newspaper showed Lugo with 40 percent, Ovelar 37 percent and Oviedo with 17 percent. La Nacion daily and Radio 970's exit poll gave Lugo 36 percent followed by Ovelar with 30 percent and Oviedo with 17 percent. All the polls had a margin of error of 2 percentage points. In the first official preliminary results, authorities released 88,211 votes counted and said Lugo had 38 percent to 36 for Ovelar and 23 for Oviedo. Officials did not say how many polling sites the sample accounted for or from what region. Sunday's presidential election was expected to be a tight race with pre-vote polls give Lugo a narrow lead. Voting was compulsory for Paraguay's 2.8 million registered voters. News broadcasts showed two minor scuffles outside polling places in the capital on Sunday, but officials said voting was peaceful and without serious incidents. "It's always good to be first!" Lugo said after showing up at a school in suburban Asuncion 10 minutes before the 7 a.m. opening of polls. Turning serious, he said he was confident that Paraguayans would elect him in hopes of seeing "a different country." The Colorado Party has endured through democracy and dictatorship in Paraguay, in power even longer than Cuba's Communist Party. Eight months ago, Lugo welded leftist unions, Indians and poor farmers into a coalition with Paraguay's main opposition party to form the Patriotic Alliance for Change. Lugo then launched a charismatic campaign in which he blamed Paraguay's deep-seated economic woes on decades of corruption by an elite that ruled at the expense of the poor in a country of subsistence farmers. At stake in Sunday's presidential vote was the political course of a country whose single-party reign began in 1947 and is the longest continuous run in Latin America. Lugo, if elected, is likely to have a center-left government, following the trend of similar governments that won office this decade across Latin America. But he has been careful to distance himself from more-radical leaders like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Fueling his charge is voter disenchantment with 13 percent joblessness in South America's poorest country after Bolivia. Some 43 percent of the 6.5 million Paraguayans live in poverty. Lugo says he was influenced by the same liberation theology frowned upon by the Vatican. But he says he heads a pluralistic coalition and is neither on the "left" nor the "right," but is a broad-based coalition. More than 100 international observers, including the Organization of American States, were monitoring the vote. Paraguayans were also voting to seat a 45-member Senate, an 80-member lower House of Deputies and 17 governors. |
