Paraguay Votes for a Civilian Leader : Election: All 3 parties claim victory amid doubts over outcome and phone line failure.

Paraguayans voted Sunday for a civilian president to end more than half a century of military government, but indecisive exit poll results produced confusion and tension as all three leading parties claimed victory.

The election is the key to a democratic transition for this landlocked nation of 4.4 million people, ruled by dictators for most of its 182-year history. But doubts over the outcome grew as the ruling Colorado Party and the opposition waged a propaganda war over the uncertain results.

Significant official returns were unavailable Sunday night, and an unofficial vote count was delayed by the failure of telephone lines to the computer center where the count was being tabulated. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, leading an international delegation of election observers, asked President Andres Rodriguez to help get the lines restored to no avail.

Non-governmental organizations conducting the unofficial count blamed the line failure on the government telephone company, a Colorado Party stronghold.

“I think it is sabotage,” said Esteban Caballero, an organizer of the unofficial count. He speculated that the Colorado Party was trying to throw the election into confusion so that its final outcome would have to be decided by the Colorado-dominated Congress.

Such tactics are not unexpected in this poor and isolated nation, where Gen. Alfredo Stroessner used rigged elections to monopolize the presidency from 1954 to 1989. Rodriguez led a bloody coup against Stroessner in February, 1989, and won a lopsided presidential election victory three months later.

Rodriguez, unlike Stroessner, has vowed to give up power to civilians. His Colorado Party ran a civilian candidate, engineer Juan Carlos Wasmosy, on Sunday.

Exit polls indicated that Wasmosy and two opposition candidates were locked in a tight three-way race. The two other leading candidates in a field of nine were economist Domingo Laino of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party and businessman Guillermo Caballero of the new National Encounter Party.

One poll by a private television channel gave Laino the lead by one percentage point. Another poll conducted by a newspaper, a radio network and another TV channel showed Wasmosy ahead by two points. Opinion surveys in April had favored Caballero.

“It’s really too early to announce who’s won and who’s lost,” said U.S. Ambassador Jon Glassman.

But cavalcades of honking cars with red Colorado flags began celebrated in the streets Sunday night. After Wasmosy’s party claimed victory, the other two did the same.

According to analysts, all three candidates are centrists who advocate similar programs of government reform and economic development based on free-market principles. Wasmosy and Caballero both have become wealthy in private business; Laino is a career politician who was jailed and exiled by the Stroessner regime.

Voter also were choosing members of a five-seat Senate, an 80-seat Chamber of Deputies and 17 governors.

News media and poll watchers reported some irregularities in the election procedures, such as voters’ names missing from electoral rolls. “The complaints are the usual ones” and do not appear widespread, said Oscar Ayala, political editor of the newspaper ABC Color.

But Jan Black, an election observer from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, said she saw signs of fraud in the province of Misiones.

“I think it’s a pattern,” Black said. “Whether or not it’s serious enough to affect the outcome of the election is another matter.” She added that if the election is close, the fraud could be decisive.

While voting was under way Sunday, Carter said Paraguayan and international observers systematically searched for irregularities. “I don’t see any way substantial fraud could take place without it being detected,” Carter said.

He expressed confidence that Rodriguez intends to turn power over to an elected civilian Aug. 15 as scheduled. “There is no doubt in my mind that President Rodriguez wants to go down in history as the person who brought democracy to this country.”

But other analysts say some dissident generals, accustomed to governing with the Colorado Party and reaping the benefits of power and official corruption, may resist turning the presidency over to a member of the opposition.