{"id":5081,"date":"2023-05-01T20:16:16","date_gmt":"2023-05-01T15:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=5081"},"modified":"2023-05-01T20:33:17","modified_gmt":"2023-05-01T15:33:17","slug":"paraguayans-vote-for-president-to-tackle-corruption-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/news\/paraguayans-vote-for-president-to-tackle-corruption-poverty\/","title":{"rendered":"Paraguayans vote for president to tackle corruption, poverty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asuncion: Paraguayans voted Sunday for a president they hope will tackle endemic corruption, crime and poverty in elections with possible consequences for ties with Taiwan and Israel.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A center-left coalition is hoping to end the almost unbroken seven decades in power of the conservative Colorado Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Santiago Pena, a 44-year-old economist and former finance minister, was leading the race with 43 percent of votes with nearly 90 percent of the vote counted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His Colorado Party has governed almost continually since 1947 — through a dictatorship and since the return of democracy in 1989, but has recently been tainted by corruption claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some 4.8 million of Paraguay’s 7.5 million inhabitants were eligible to elect a president and members of the legislature in nine hours of voting that closed at 4:00 pm local time (2000 GMT).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voting is compulsory and the outcome is determined in a single round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pena’s main challenger was lawyer Efrain Alegre, 60, of the Concertacion center-left coalition, who led narrowly in pre-election opinion polls amid a recent anti-incumbency trend in Latin American elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had 27.5 percent with 87 percent of votes counted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though they differ on economic and international policy, the two frontrunners are both socially conservative, holding strong anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage stances in an overwhelmingly Catholic nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We hope the least worse wins. All have their weaknesses,” Marta Fernandez, 29, told AFP after casting her ballot in Asuncion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also in the capital, voter 60-year-old Ana Barros said: “You have to have at least hope that there will be less crime. It is what I hope as a mother, that the children can study and have work.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results of the election to replace President Mario Abdo Benitez, leaving office after a constitutionally limited single term, should be known within hours.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asuncion: Paraguayans voted Sunday for a president they hope will tackle endemic corruption, crime and poverty in elections with possible consequences for ties with Taiwan and Israel. A center-left coalition is hoping to end the almost unbroken seven decades in power of the conservative Colorado Party. But Santiago Pena, a 44-year-old economist and former finance […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,2,342,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-politics","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5081"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}