Paraguayans, Believing Promises of Democracy, Going to Polls Today

The cells once reserved for political prisoners now are assigned to accused torturers and other miscreants from the fallen regime. Banned newspapers have reopened and are reporting on corruption scandals and on the opposition’s views about today’s elections.

In Paraguay? In South America’s parody of the tin-pot dictatorship?

Three months ago, Paraguay was the least likely candidate on the continent for political pluralism and trials of official wrongdoers. Virtually overnight, this small country has laid claim to membership in the club of democratic nations.

Some opposition quarters still suspect that Paraguay has traded one autocratic general for another after Gen. Andres Rodriguez’s coup Feb. 3 against Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, the dour patriarch who concentrated all power in his own hands for nearly 35 years. The skeptics see a modernized, more subtle version of Paraguay’s traditional paternalism.

For the moment, however, most Paraguayans appear disposed to believe the promises they are hearing of human rights and democracy, based not only on Rodriguez’s words and style but also on his actions since the coup.

Assured of Victory

Rodriguez, who for years was Stroessner’s right-hand man, is as certain of victory in today’s election as Stroessner used to be in each of his successive presidential elections since 1954. Polls show Rodriguez winning up to 70% of the vote and his Colorado Party dominating the congressional elections.

Although the opposition claims that Stroessner-style fraud persists, analysts agree that Rodriguez’s coming victory will be less the result of repression than of the national political honeymoon he has enjoyed since Stroessner went into exile in Brazil--a euphoria that one diplomat called “a hooray-the-witch-is-dead syndrome.”

If the pledges of a fair ballot are carried out, the vote will also prove what many have long believed: the century-old Colorado Party, which Stroessner warped into a personal power machine, retains enough mass appeal that it can win an open election against genuine opposition parties.

Stroessner banned the main opposition political movements, the Liberals and the Febreristas, and set up token opposition parties, which allowed Stroessner to proclaim Paraguay a democracy.

Immediately after he seized power and was sworn in as provisional president, Rodriguez promised to legalize the opposition, restore civil rights and freedom of expression and improve relations with the Roman Catholic Church, which had disintegrated in recent years as abuses and corruption grew. He called elections for May 1 and soon accepted the Colorado Party’s unanimous nomination--promising not to seek reelection in 1993.

In his first campaign appearance, the 65-year-old general proved to be a crowd pleaser, declaring: “The arbitrary and arrogant attitude which flourished among individuals in the deposed regime was not democracy. Never again should this sorry state be repeated.”

The political opposition, prohibited for decades even from organizing, much less participating, in elections, is largely content to accept Rodriguez’s election--and then to make the next four-year term the real test of democratic transition.

“This is a practice event; we are not interested in this election but in future elections. This is a rehearsal,” said Euclides Acevedo, an articulate young leader of the Revolutionary Febrerista Party, a social democratic organization. “These are not going to be democratic elections, but they can serve democracy.”

Acevedo and other opposition leaders stress that the elections for president and Congress are being carried out under virtually the same rules that governed Stroessner’s elections. Antiquated voter rolls, a ban on party elections and the short campaign period--90 days after the coup--militate against a respectable opposition showing.

Agreed to Some Reforms

Rodriguez did extend the voter registration period by eight days, meeting a demand of the opposition, and agreed to the use of indelible ink stamps on voters’ hands to prevent double voting.

Under Stroessner, the Colorado Party, freed from real opposition, had been able to cement its grip over every aspect of life in this poor, landlocked nation of about 4 million people. Schoolteachers, government employees and soldiers all had to be party members, and incipient opposition to the regime was quickly suppressed, while loyal officials fed at the government trough in ways that are beginning to come to light.

Accusations focus on wrongdoing by the dozen disgraced officials most closely allied to Stroessner in his final years. They make up the “militant” wing of the Colorado Party, which in August, 1987, wrested control from the “traditionalists,” who opposed the increasing concentration of power in Stroessner’s hands. The coup occurred when the militants sought to maneuver Stroessner’s son, Gustavo, to the fore as his father’s successor at the expense of Rodriguez, himself one of Paraguay’s richest men.

Along with the corruption exposures--some of them reported by ABC Color, a respected opposition newspaper that reopened in March--have come detailed reports of human rights abuses.

While civilian governments in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil have been unable to prosecute such violations by their former military rulers, Paraguay is doing so. Rodriguez, his own position as head of the army secure, apparently need not fear uprisings from within the ranks.

Alberto Cantero, former head of the political section of the police investigations department, has been suspended pending trial on torture charges, along with two subordinates.

Investigators reported finding an unmarked cemetery believed to contain 30 to 40 graves. A human rights group said the victims were dissidents killed by Stroessner’s government between 1963 and 1976.

Yet there has been little apparent change in the Colorado Party’s stranglehold on civic life, according to opposition leaders.

‘The Dictator Is Gone’

“One can’t speak of profound changes,” said Acevedo. “Perhaps the only profound change, with all its limitations, is that the dictator has gone. The dictatorship is intact, as a system, as a model. And there continues to be a synergetic link between the (Colorado) party, the government and the armed forces.”

The principal opposition candidate, Domingo Laino of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party, complained of “a basic, structural fraud” in the voting lists, noting that they have been the source of abuse in the past. “Sometimes 100% of the people on the list vote, but sometimes it has been 190%. The dead, ghosts, figures from mythology. We all know that in any democracy, 100% of the people don’t vote. Basically, this has not changed.”

During its years in the wilderness, the opposition became notorious for internal squabbles, and those habits have died hard, even when there finally is something at stake. The parties chose to put up their own candidates rather than throw their weight behind Laino, so the opposition’s presidential vote will be diluted.

Augusto Roa Bastos, Paraguay’s best-known author, who spent decades in exile, was one of many to return home after Stroessner’s fall. He told a recent gathering of news executives that in the months ahead, “the life of the republic itself is at stake. To save it from falling back into similar dark shadows like those suffered for so long must be the supreme objective of the citizenry.”

That also means modernizing an outdated economy that thrived on smuggling and state involvement in industry, squeezing out and discouraging private investment. Rodriguez has named an economic team loaded with technocrats, in place of cronies, who promise to attract foreign capital with incentive programs and to exploit potentially profitable export markets. Rodriguez, who owns currency exchange houses, also quickly unified the official and black market exchange rates to spur exports.