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A former Roman Catholic bishop and self-styled champion of the poor on Sunday broke the 62-year grip on the presidency by the ruling party here, the longest-serving political party in the world.

The former bishop, Fernando Lugo, who resigned from the church two years ago to run, was leading with 41 percent of the vote, over Blanca Ovelar de Duarte, with 31 percent, with 92 percent of the votes counted, according to unofficial results. Shortly before 9 p.m., Mrs. Ovelar, the candidate for the National Republican Association, known as the Colorado Party, conceded defeat.

Mr. Lugo, 56, will be the first Paraguayan president since 1946 not to be from the Colorado Party. “Today we’ve written a new chapter in our nation’s political history,” he said late Sunday.

Even as the final results were still being tallied, wild street celebrations broke out in downtown Asunción, near the government house. Revelers set off fireworks, waved Paraguayan flags and began dancing in the streets to spontaneous drumming deep into the night. They chanted Mr. Lugo’s campaign slogan, “Lugo has heart.

More than 65 percent of eligible voters cast ballots on Sunday, according to the preliminary results. Paraguayans are voting for only the fourth time since the former dicator Alfredo Stroessner was ousted in 1989 after 35 years in power.

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farmer union leader Tomas Zayas explains, "If Lugo is elected, it will open a door for more changes in the future, but that's all. We'll take what we can get."

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mrzine

[ 20 April 2008: Message edited by: RosaL ]

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Eight months ago, Lugo welded leftist unions, Indigenous peoples and poor farmers into a coalition to form the Patriotic Alliance for Change.

Fuelling his election is the 13 percent joblessness and a poverty rate that includes 43 percent of Paraguays 6.5 million inhabitants, many of whom survive on one meal a day.

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[ 21 April 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

And better than the typical Cuba-type fascistoid dictatorship that you generally favour.

So often, the romantic revolutionaries cheer from the sidelines, and if they get their way, the result is Zimbabwe.

Then they claim that it is the bad outsiders who throttled the regime.

When a moderate leftist wins in Paraguay, a country they know nothing about, they apply the same stupid formulas which ruined socialism for the whole of the last century.

There is little space on babble for anyone to advocate moderate left positions anymore. As soon as you do, some fool will demand EVEN MORE RADICAL CHANGE!

Yesterday was the biggest change in Paraguay since I began following it in the late 1960's.

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Originally posted by ceti:
What is it with you Jeff? You're like a broken record on this. It seems like you entirely only have one axe to grind.

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I know and that is why there is simply no point going into any of these types of threads, because invariably they immediately turn into meta debates about the bait that was thrown out.

I think it is fantastic Paraguay threw out the "natural governing party", gives me hope for AB, and Canada. But, I guess we too might have to get to the point where almost 50% of the population is starving before it happens. Thankfully it won't be too far from now, so.....

[ 21 April 2008: Message edited by: remind ]

[ 21 April 2008: Message edited by: RosaL ]

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Originally posted by jeff house:
The biggest issue on babble is the presence of Communist screwballs, who make it impossible to discuss anything serious.

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I find your rabid anticommunist rhetoric to be as unhelpful.

And a liberation theologian(and recovering bishop)is a great step forward.

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Originally posted by jeff house:
Too bad there is no website around in which intelligent discussion of the conundrums of power in Paraguay can be possible.

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Is that what relief pitchers for the Reds use in a bases-loaded jam?

[ 21 April 2008: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

By the way, Ken, a great many German-speakers have emigrated to South American countries - most had absolutely nothing to do with Nazism or the Stroessner dictatorship.

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An Indian woman who says she was captured in the jungle and sold into forced labor as a girl became a member of Paraguay's Cabinet on Monday, pledging to improve life for the South American nation's indigenous population.

Path-breaking President Fernando Lugo formally named Margarita Mbywangi minister of indigenous affairs as the former Roman Catholic bishop began setting up his government following his inauguration on Friday, which ended 61 years of rule by the Colorado Party.

The 46-year-old Ache chief, a mother of three who is studying for her high school diploma, becomes the first indigenous person to oversee Indian affairs in Paraguay following a career as an activist defending the lands of her people, a group of several hundred who until recently were nearly all hunter-gatherers.

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez promised Saturday to supply Paraguay with all the oil it needs to meet its repeated problems of crude shortages.

Chavez made the announcement during a popular event held in the town of San Pedro de Ycuamandiyu, about 318 kilometers (198 miles) north of Asunción, in which he signed with the new Paraguayan president, former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo, several cooperation agreements.

"We have signed the first commitment to supply Paraguay with all the oil it needs, right down to the last drop," said the Venezuelan head of state, whose country regularly provides 70,000 cubic meters (440,300 barrels) of diesel to the Paraguayan market per month.

Paraguay, which produces no fossil fuels of its own, consumes 90,000 cubic meters (566,000 barrels) of diesel per month, with the remainder of the fuel coming from Argentina and Brazil.

The letters of intent signed by both presidents also included Venezuelan aid in the areas of food, trade and energy along with educational and social cooperation.

"We signed a group of accords and we want to carry them out to the letter beginning today, and may this be the first step in building a closer, more productive bilateral relationship," Chavez said.

For his part, Lugo, who Friday succeeded Nicanor Duarte in the presidency for a five-year term, expressed gratitude for the initiatives of the Caracas government.

"What we have signed today with the people of Venezuela, may it not be something that stays only in letters and good intentions," he said.

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After a week in office, Lugo has left no one in any doubt where he stands. Like Correa in Ecuador, he sees no further use for the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund, preferring the advice of the US economist Joseph Stiglitz who has suggested that a 10% tax on beef and soya exports would do wonders for the country's low tax base. The wealthy landowners would complain, as they have done in neighbouring Argentina, but they are unlikely to risk alienating Lugo's support among the rural poor so early in his presidency.

Another bastion of the old conservative order is the legal system, where root and branch reform is expected imminently. Lugo has already begun clearing the decks with the military and the police, traditionally the arbiters of Paraguay's political affairs. He has put a definitive end to the "period of transition" that has constrained the country's democratic practice since the downfall of General Alfredo Stroessner, nearly 20 years ago in 1989, and brought in an entirely fresh high command.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/22/paraguay.venezuela

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By the way, Ken, a great many German-speakers have emigrated to South American countries - most had absolutely nothing to do with Nazism or the Stroessner dictatorship.

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This is an interesting comment -- however, it seems like a lot of the strident support for the anti-indigenous rightists throughout Latin America are coming from these European transplants, who feel that they have built their countries themselves and refuse to share their country's wealth with what they think of as "lazy Indios." The fact that the governor of Santa Cruz, Ruben Costas, and the leader of the Santa Cruz autonomy movement, Branko Marinkovic (Croatian, probably also Ustashe background), openly deride Evo Morales in racist terms, just as the Venezuela opposition does with Hugo is very telling. Some of the worst characters shared this stock -- Pinochet was himself a French-Chilean, Robert D'Aubuisson of El Salvador was of French background as well, Stroessner, a German-Paraguayan. Heck, even the Japanese have gotten into the act with Fujimori.