Ruling Party Candidate Leads in Paraguay

After a troubled, occasionally bizarre presidential campaign in Latin America’s most fragile democracy, early returns in Paraguayan elections Sunday gave the edge to the machine-style political party that has ruled this isolated nation for 50 years.

Raul Cubas of the Colorado Party, a wealthy engineer and former finance minister, held an apparently solid lead of about 6 percentage points over former Sen. Domingo Laino of the center-left Democratic Alliance, according to exit polls and projections based on partial results Sunday evening.

But the opposition party charged that the results were tainted by the discovery of fraud involving doctored vote tallies. The allegations arose after a day in which international observers described the electoral process as well-conducted.

The crusade to retain power by the Colorados, the hemisphere’s longest continuously ruling party except for Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, centered on a charismatic leader in a jail cell: Gen. Lino Oviedo, the former candidate whom a military tribunal sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment in April for attempting a coup in 1996. The sentence disqualified Oviedo’s candidacy after a political brawl that almost caused another coup by rival generals.

It was Oviedo’s name, not the candidate’s, that a crowd of Colorado voters decked out in party crimson chanted Sunday evening as a sweaty Cubas, 54, declared victory.

“The strength of the Colorado Party has been demonstrated,” Cubas said. “We will work with all Paraguayans to improve our living conditions.”

A defiant Laino, meanwhile, predicted victory and called the Colorados a “mafia that has once again tried to fool public opinon.”

“We are going to begin a new era,” the opposition candidate said. “There will be a new Paraguay.”

Cubas, formerly the vice presidential candidate, replaced Oviedo only three weeks ago. He has promised to win the retired general’s release and grant him a leadership role, raising fears that Cubas will become a puppet for a militaristic strongman with an aggressively nationalist, right-wing ideology.

Oviedo is regarded with alarm by the international community because of the military’s corrupt, anti-democratic tradition in this country of 5.5 million, a haven for organized crime, smuggling, product piracy and international terrorism. High-ranking U.S. diplomats, including recently retired Ambassador Robert Service, have openly questioned the general’s credentials to lead a democracy.

Earlier Sunday, Cubas dutifully visited the army jail where Oviedo is being held. Supporters cheered, and a black cow and chickens wandered behind a line of grim-faced riot police guarding the entrance to the military base.

Supporting Oviedo

Regarding his vow to liberate Oviedo, Cubas said: “I don’t see why the international community or the military should be worried because someone tries to ensure that justice is done--justice that was denied in the case of Oviedo for political motives. We believe that the government needs the political support of a leader like Lino Oviedo.”

Despite a decade of democracy in Latin America, Paraguay’s woes are symptomatic of a larger drift on the continent toward authoritarianism and disenchantment with democracy’s failure to ameliorate social and economic injustice.

In Ecuador, presidential candidates are entering the homestretch this month as the interim president, whose predecessor was deposed on grounds of mental instability, battles a legislative panel questioning his authority. Colombia will hold elections this year as guerrillas and drug lords control large chunks of territory. In Venezuela, the top candidate in opinion polls for the December elections is a military officer who led a failed coup.

“This society and other societies are profoundly disillusioned with democracy,” said Carlos Martini, a Paraguayan political analyst. He cited polls showing that 61% of Latin Americans favor democracy but only 27% approve of the way their democracies function.

Voters interviewed in this torpid riverfront capital said they favored the Colorados because of Oviedo’s promises to fight crime and develop the rural economy. Some expressed nostalgia for the rule of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, a dictator who ran the party and the government like a mafia fiefdom until his overthrow in 1989.

“Before, we could not express our opinions, but our stomachs were full,” said Jose Valdivieso, 35, an architectural designer. “Now we can say anything we want, but we can’t eat words. There is great uncertainty about the future of Paraguay. I doubt it will get better.”

Regardless of the outcome, Sunday’s vote represents the first time during a nine-year democratic transition that voters have chosen a civilian successor to a civilian president. Turnout was estimated at 80%.

There were only scattered reports of the thuggish tactics of the past, when the Colorado machine routinely bribed opposition voters to stay away from the polls and used military trucks and hordes of government employees to get the faithful to the voting booths.

This landlocked nation has been an island of underdevelopment and isolation during years when foreign investment and economic reform pumped up the growth rates of most South American nations.

Paraguay’s inequities are among the hemisphere’s worst: 20% of the population controls 62% of the wealth, 351 landowners control 40% of the cultivable land, and a third of the population is unemployed or underemployed. Education levels are especially low in the countryside, an Oviedo stronghold where many peasants speak only the indigenous Guarani language.

Underground Economy

And Stroessner’s kleptocracy has by no means been dismantled. The federal comptroller’s office estimates the profits generated by corruption at $2.3 billion. The underground economy, which encompasses everything from cocaine to money laundering to the manufacture and smuggling of pirated CDs, rivals the gross national product of $10 billion. The “triple border” with Brazil and Argentina is a hotbed of outlaw activity.

“We have to clean up the border and get rid of this image of corruption,” said Carlos Filizzola, the Democratic Alliance’s 38-year-old vice presidential candidate, who epitomizes the opposition’s appeal to younger, urban voters. “We are not connected with corruption the way the ruling party is.”

That debate pales by comparison with the feud in the ruling party ranks that landed Oviedo behind bars. Oviedo has been an enemy of President Juan Carlos Wasmosy ever since the general attempted a coup in 1996.

After Oviedo’s victory in last year’s primary made him the clear favorite for the presidency, Wasmosy unleashed a judicial onslaught with the support of the military brass, who fear Oviedo will seek revenge on them.

During the months leading up to Oviedo’s conviction, the military periodically deployed tanks and planes in so-called maneuvers that were seen as efforts to intimidate the justice system and Oviedo’s forces. Wasmosy’s rhetoric seemed to encourage military intervention.

That tension could revive because Cubas will undoubtedly comply with enormous pressure to engineer Oviedo’s release. The military is troubled by his campaign slogan, “Cubas in the government, Oviedo in power,” which mimics the motto used in Argentina by strongman Juan Domingo Peron when he returned from exile in 1973 and ran an ally for president.

The manner in which Cubas proceeds will determine the level of conflict with the military and Wasmosy, who is scheduled to step down Aug. 15. Back-room negotiations within the party and with the opposition are likely.