Word: colorados
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...Lugo is Paraguay's first former cleric to be a presidential candidate, his closest contender is the first woman: Blanca Ovelar of the conservative Colorado Party, which has ruled the nation of 6.5 million people for the past 61 years, the longest period of any party currently in power anywhere in the world. A win by Ovelar, who is polling up to 34%, would follow a regional trend set by the 2006 election of Chile's first female President, Michelle Bachelet, and that of President Cristina Fernandez last year in Argentina...
...bearded, bespectacled Lugo stunned Paraguay and angered the Vatican in 2006 when he renounced the priesthood to enter politics. He went on to spearhead an uneasy alliance of Liberals, socialists and workers' movements that have long opposed Colorado hegemony. His policies remain vague, and his critics warn that he would simply be a Paraguayan version of radical leftists like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales. But Lugo's running mate is a free-market liberal, Federico Franco, a Morales critic. On the campaign trail, Lugo has criticized Chavez for polarizing Venezuelan society and urges greater political openness...
...United Nations, 21% of the people live in extreme poverty - and the figure is rising - making it South America's second-poorest nation behind Bolivia. (Per capital gross domestic product is little more than $4,000 a year.) It is also one of the hemisphere's most corrupt, which Colorado critics blame on so many years of one-party rule - 35 of those under the brutal and venal Stroessner until his 1989 overthrow. Paraguay's government has been civilian since 1993; but a recent survey found that more than a third of voters regard public corruption as the country...
...election with a simple plurality. (Most Latin countries hold run-offs if no candidate receives a majority.) The winner won't take office until August 15, leaving plenty of time for electoral skullduggery, legal challenges and the dissolution of alliances. For her part, Ovelar promises the Colorado Party will concede defeat, "even if it's only by one vote," and peacefully hand over power. But in the 197 years since it won independence from Spain, Paraguay has never once witnessed a peaceful transfer of power from government to opposition, and many remain unconvinced. If Lugo does win, Paraguay will...
Mayor Nikolauk, a retired Air Force colonel and a member of the Upper Colorado River Authority, also had some contact with the FLDS leadership, especially when they ran afoul of Texas environmental rules. They were dumping raw sewage into one of the wide "draws" - the dry stream beds that can suddenly fill in heavy rains, sending water downstream to the Colorado River, a vital source for agriculture and recreation. The FLDS hired a Dallas engineer to design a sewage plant for them, but they wouldn't allow him on the land, Nikolauk said, so an arrangement was made to haul...