By Bridget Johnson, your guide to Journalism

President Nicanor Duarte, pictured, is out, and there are three top contenders for the presidency of Paraguay for voters to choose from tomorrow.

The frontrunner, former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo, is polling about 30 percent to 40 percent. A socialist ally of Hugo Chavez who leads a center-left coalition, Lugo was suspended by the Vatican for his political involvement and left the priesthood to run for president.

Paraguay also has a chance to get its first woman president in Colorado Party candidate Blanca Ovelar, currently serving as education minister. The Colorado Party has ruled Paraguay for about six decades, and concerns about the party having undue influence over the vote have fueled Lugo’s candidacy. She’s also running about 30 percent in the polls.

On the right side of the political spectrum, retired army Gen. Lino Oviedo is carrying nearly 30 percent of poll numbers. Oviedo was part of the 1989 coup that overthrew 35 years of military rule by General Alfredo Stroessner.

Time magazine has an interesting preview of the vote:

“So far the election campaign has been dirty, and the streets of Asuncion are plastered with lurid propaganda. One poster depicts the Colorados as a plague of mosquitoes that need eradicating, while another portrays Lugo as the Antichrist with devil’s horns and a pitchfork. Lugo’s campaign has accused the Colorados of tampering with ballots — and campaign manager Lopez says he fully expects Lugo to lose ‘between 70,000 and 100,000 votes’ to fraud. Newspapers, for example, have published the names of long-dead Paraguayans who are still registered to vote, and international observers have warned of a ‘tense electoral climate.’


Ironically, one of Lugo’s largest blocs of opponents is Catholic churchgoers who feel betrayed by his renunciation of his priestly vows. ‘If Lugo can lie to the Pope, he can lie to anyone,’ says Lino Oviedo, a former army general who is running a close third in polls — and is running only because the Supreme Court last year overturned his conviction for allegedly leading a 1996 coup attempt. Says Felipe Lopez, 49, an unemployed laborer who plans to vote for Oviedo, ‘Lugo was a man of the church and he gave it all up for what? For ambition.’”

And Al-Jazeera has an informative Q&A.

A candidate only needs a simple plurality of the vote to win a five-year term.

(Photo by Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)