AMY GOODMAN: A former Catholic priest once known as the Bishop of the Poor has been elected president. Fernando Lugo will be the first Paraguayan president since 1946 not to be from the conservative Colorado Party. Lugo won 41 percent of the vote, beating Blanca Ovelar, who received 31 percent. Lugo has pledged to crack down on corruption and channel Paraguay’s wealth into social programs.
PRESIDENT-ELECT FERNANDO LUGO: [translated] May we never again, in the political class of Paraguay, never again base our politics on clientism and enticements, because it has done so much to damage our national politics.
AMY GOODMAN: Lugo’s win ends more than six decades of one-party rule in Paraguay. Election officials said Sunday’s voting had the highest turnout, about 66 percent, of any presidential election since 1993.
Lugo is the first bishop ever to become president of a country. Both Paraguay and the Vatican ban clergy from seeking political office, so Lugo resigned in December 2006. Lugo says he was influenced by the liberation theology of the ’60s. He told the Associated Press he would not move to the presidential palace, remaining instead in his modest house in a middle-class suburb. He said the first lady would be his eldest sister.
Washington has signaled a willingness to work with Lugo and hailed his election as a “step forward” in Paraguay, but a State Department official told the Los Angeles Times his victory had left Washington worried about its waning influence in Latin America.
In a pre-election interview with the Los Angeles Times, Lugo noted Washington’s sometimes-contradictory role in Latin America, saying, “The United States…has sustained the great dictatorships, but afterward lifted the banner of democracy.” He went on to say Washington must acknowledge a new scenario in which Latin American governments “won’t accept any type of intervention from any country, no matter how big it is.”
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