
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 9, 1993                   TAG: 9305090144
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: ASUNCION, PARAGUAY                                LENGTH: Short

PARAGUAY TO CHOOSE NEW PRESIDENT TODAY

For the first time since Paraguay won independence from Spain in 1811, no one here knows who will win the presidential election today.

Breaking a long tradition of military coups and rigged civilian elections, Paraguayans are to vote in the first free presidential elections in their history. With three centrist candidates in a dead heat, the winner is to be chosen by the voters, a new concept in this landlocked nation in the heart of South America.

In another novelty here, all six presidential candidates are civilians after nearly four decades of rule by army generals.

If fraud does not taint the process, the vote could also break a monopoly of nearly half a century by the ruling Colorado Party, which was born in 1947. The Colorado's unbroken tenure is surpassed in the Americas only by Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party.

But, worried that fraud could affect South America's last conversion to democratic civilian rule, 300 international observers from eight different groups have come here to watch today's voting.

- The New York Times

by CNB