A former leftist Paraguayan bishop celebrated his historic electoral triumph yesterday after defeating ruling party candidate Blanca Ovelar in a presidential election and ending 61 years of conservative Colorado Party rule.
Fernando Lugo was declared the winner by the Electoral Tribunal with nearly 41 percent of the vote compared to almost 31 percent for Ovelar, crushing her dream of becoming the country’s first woman president.
“Today we can dream of a different country,” Lugo, 56, told reporters late on Sunday. “Paraguay will simply not be remembered for its corruption and poverty, but for its honesty.”
PHOTO: AP
Ovelar, whose party has been in power since 1947, conceded defeat before the final results were released.
“I recognize the triumph of Fernando Lugo,” she said. “We acknowledge with dignity that the results of the presidential contest are at this point irreversible.”
Another candidate, Lino Oviedo, 64, a retired army chief who helped stage a coup that ended the 35-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, trailed far behind in third place with 22 percent of the vote.
Lugo earlier addressed jubilant supporters of his leftist Patriotic Alliance for Change coalition at his campaign headquarters, saying the election showed that “the little people can also win.”
“You are responsible for the happiness of the majority of the Paraguayan people today,” he said as supporters chanted his name.
“This is the Paraguay I dream about, with many colors, many faces, the Paraguay of everyone,” said Lugo, who was suspended from his religious order by the Vatican in late 2006 for his entry into politics.
His supporters began celebrating their anticipated victory setting off fireworks even before polls closed.
The Colorado Party has been in power for 61 years, including Stroessner rule. Paraguay chose its first democratically elected president in 1993.
There is no runoff vote in Paraguay. Outgoing President Nicanor Duarte constitutionally could not seek re-election after serving a five-year term.
Turnout was a high 65 percent among Paraguay’s 2.9 million eligible voters, said Electoral Tribunal vice president Juan Manuel Morales, who announced the final results of the elections when 92 percent of precincts had reported.
Lugo’s Patriotic Alliance for Change coalition earlier had feared fraud would mar Sunday’s vote, but as 70 observers from the Organization of American States monitored ballot stations, electoral court chief Rafael Dendia said voting went smoothly.
International Transparency, an organization monitoring for voter fraud, reported some cases of corruption.
“We’ve seen voting cards being bought and money going around in some polling booths,” one of the group’s observers, Pilar Callizo, told Channel 4. “We also saw Colorado Party teams inside and outside some polling stations creating an atmosphere of intimidation.”
After election results were announced, Duarte vowed to help Lugo make a smooth transition.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS