MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Paraguayan general elections scheduled for April 2008

Paraguay will be going to the polls to elect the successor of President Nicanor Duarte Flores on April 20 next year, confirmed this week the country's Electoral Tribunal.

Up for grabs on that day will also be the post of vice president and Congress' 80 members of the Lower House and 45 Senators, as well as the executive and legislative councils of the country's 17 provinces. Elections are held every five years. The calendar becomes official next August 20 with the timetable for political parties primaries scheduled to take place between December 9 and January 20. Electoral alliances have time until November 15 to register. In next year's election the ruling Colorado Party which had dominated the politics of Paraguay, in the heartland of South America, for the last six decades will be seriously challenged (possibly for the first time) by a powerful coalition with an only presidential ticket headed by a former bishop, Fernando Lugo, who leads comfortably in all public opinion polls. Winners will be officially proclaimed May 23 of 2008 and voting for the first time will be done with computerized equipment, and mostly electronic voting, donated by the Brazilian electoral authorities. Paraguay a member of Mercosur and one of the poorest countries in South America has a long history of political instability and only recovered formal democracy in 1989 with the ousting of a dictator who governed forty years. In related news an appeals court in Asunción this week repealed an eight years prison sentence against former Paraguayan president Luis Gonzalez Macchi who had been accused of false statements and illicit enrichment. Gonzalez Macchi who ruled from 1999 to 2003 thus was set free after having been under home arrest since December 29, last year.