MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Paraguay: fingers crossed

The candidate of the ruling Paraguayan party Nicanor Duarte comfortably leads in the opinion polls for the coming presidential election next April 27 and the division among opposition factions is ensuring his victory according to local analysts.

The latest poll published over the weekend indicates that Mr. Duarte leads with a solid 37,2% of vote intention, followed ten points behind by the independent businessman Pedro Fadul, 27,9%; another ten points further down comes Liberal Party hopeful Julio César Franco, former vicepresident who is campaigning from a wheel chair because of a broken leg, and finally Guillermo Sánchez with 6,8%, the straw man for former General Lino Ovideo currently exiled in Brazil.
However for the electorate of the debt ridden impoverished landlocked Paraguay, and its candidates, face several challenges lye ahead.

One of them is precisely Mr. Oviedo who was sentenced in absentia for masterminding the killing of a vice president in 1999 and in 1996 organizing a military coup but who also has significant support in rural areas given his knowledge of the aborigines language, guarani, and in the still a powerful figure in the Paraguayan Army.

Populist Mr. Oviedo given the poor showing in the opinion polls of his candidate Mr. Sánchez, has began campaigning directly by satellite dish from Brazil with some success and has indicated that his strategy is similar to that of former Argentine president Juan Domingo Perón and Héctor Cámpora. Exiled in Spain and banned from participating, Mr. Perón managed to have Mr. Cámpora elected president in 1973, who pardoned him opening the way for his triumphal return to Argentina after 17 years.

Mr. Oviedo's plan is more simple and direct as he told the Brazilian press in an interview: once his candidate becomes president, the Paraguayan Congress would elect him vicepresident, and following Mr. Sanchez's resignation the former general becomes head of the Executive for the rest of the five years mandate.

His slogan is a catchy "Guillermo (Sánchez) wins, and the general becomes president". Mr. Oviedo also warns that if the leading candidate Mr. Nicanor Duarte is elected president, "he won't last six months", which given the succession of interim presidents and political instability in Paraguay since 1998, should not be unnoticed.

But even if Mr. Oviedo ambitions can be checked there's another immediate constitutional hurdle conditioning the urgent addressing of the precarious financial situation of the country that is considered to be in the verge of an international "technical default", with very few resources left to keep government offices running. Whoever is elected Paraguayan president April 27, takes office August 15, but given the emergency, all candidates are unanimous in that the ceremony should be advanced to May 14, National Independence Day.

The idea is that the elected president be nominated by Congress vicepresident, (the post is currently vacant because Mr. Franco is the Liberal candidate), and then takes over formally May 14.

Current caretaker president González Macchi has publicly agreed to the political understanding among the candidates of the leading parties who desperately need time to avoid a repeat in Paraguay of the extreme financial suffering of its neighbors.

And there's another possible snag in the two weeks between April 27 and May 14: the Paraguayan electorate for the first time, as happened in neighboring Brazil, will be voting electronically.
However in Brazil the system worked reasonably well and the political elite prefer finesse and wit to threatening and herding.
Fingers crossed until May 14.