Priest takes on Paraguay's party monopoly
A rural priest hopes to become Paraguay's president on his promise to fix long-standing social ills such as poverty, and in the process unseat a party that for 60 years has run the country top to bottom.
Posted on Wed, Aug. 08, 2007
BY JACK CHANG
McClatchy News Service
ASUNCION, Paraguay -- For 60 years, Paraguay's Colorado Party has used political patronage -- as well as fraud and violence -- to remain in control of the country, longer than any other political party in the world that's still in power.
But now Fernando Lugo, 48, a country priest with no previous political experience, appears poised to bring that long run to an end -- a challenge that reflects a Latin America-wide trend against long-ruling political elites who have failed to deliver better lives for the poor.
In 2000, Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, which was then the world's longest-ruling, lost its first presidential election in more than 70 years. After that, former union head Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva became Brazil's first president of working-class origins, Bolivia elected its first indigenous leader, and socially conservative Chile chose its first female president.
''Political parties all over Latin America are in crisis because they haven't responded to the social demands of Latin Americans,'' Lugo said during an interview with McClatchy in his office in a working-class neighborhood of the Paraguayan capital, Asunción.
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Some critics suggest that he would ally himself with regional leftist leaders who have harshly criticized the Bush administration.Lugo was vague about his agenda in the interview. He said his priorities would include cleaning up Paraguay's corrupt justice system, launching an agrarian reform program and strengthening the rule of law to attract more investment.
He suggested that discussing his ideology was a throwback to a different time.
''It's a discussion from the 1970s,'' he said.``We just need bread, and it doesn't matter whether it's from the right or the left hand.''More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/196043.html