The Colorado candidate and Gen. Oviedo have conceded, the TREP quick count was in line with a half-dozen exit polls, and ABC Color is celebrating the end of Colorado dominance and the legacy of Stroessner:
El pueblo paraguayo venció el miedo, núcleo central de la campaña de la ANR en este último tramo, y eligió a Fernando Lugo como presidente de la República, por más de 170 mil votos. El Partido Colorado es desplazado del poder luego de 61 años, de los cuales sostuvo por 35 años a la dictadura de Alfredo Stroessner. Mucha gente siente este cambio de timón como el oxígeno imprescindible para un país con un estado que fabrica miseria y expulsa a su gente. El pueblo habló fuerte con una voz imposible de parar con fraude.
The Paraguayan people conquered fear, the keynote of the ANR (National Republic Alliance, Colorado) campaign, and elected Fernando Lugo president of the Republic by more than 170,000 votes. The Colorado party is out of power after more than 61 years, 35 of them taken up by the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. Many people see this change of direction as providing the oxygen sorely needed by a nation with a state that manufactures abject poverty and drives its people into exile. The people made a powerful statement in a voice that fraud could not silence.
There were faint echos of familiar tactics in the election: President Duarte claimed the nation had been infiltrated by Hugolandian agitators — just like the in Mexican elections of 2006 and the recent Costa Rican referendum — while the Colorado candidate claimed, absurdly, that exit polls showing a 10-point advantage for the Lugo alliance constituted the notorious “technical tie” used to promote fear, uncertainty and doubt about the legitimacy of results (Florida 2000, Mexico 2006).
The International Republican Institute was not invited to observe these elections, as it was, for example, in Kenya recently. See
- Kenya: “Slate Says IRI Is Sitting on Exit Poll”
- The Empire Pontificates: “Kenya Vote Was Divided”
- The Nation: “Kenya Should Follow Nigeria’s Statesmanlike Example”
Source: TSJE, Paraguay
Nearly 3% of the manual precinct bulletins have been scanned and posted online (in PDF format.)
Lugo has promised to bash the Brazilian bully until it hands over what he considers a fairer share of the revenues from the Itaipú hydroelectric dam.
Notable was nearly unanimous and open support for the Lugo candidacy by leading newspapers and media outlets. ABC Color faces a complaint of violating election law for a cover yesterday with a front-page editorial stressing the Lugo campaign’s key talking point — the Braziilans are hogging Itaipu! — and a front-page editorial cartoon showing Lugo breaking the tape in the electoral 100-meter dash.
The challenge for a Lugo presidency will be to break the hold of the Colorado’s political patronage scheme over the machinery of the state bureaucracy. You have had to be a card-carrying Colorado to get a civil service job or attend university, for example. “Governments come and go, but the apparatchiks abide forever.” You see this dynamic at work in Brazil as well. And the influence of Larry Rohter’s good buddies down at the embassy: Will it continue unabated?
Adiieu, mon generalíssimo, and thanks for the economic miracle, Chicago Boys.
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