General elections are being held in Paraguay in which the Colorado party is risking its continuity, in a scenario in which polls released on social networks did not give a clear favorite with the intention to vote between the ruling party Santiago Peña and the opposition Efrain Alegre .
Heavy turnout and a flurry of accusations between the ruling party and the opposition marked the start of the early morning hours for Paraguay’s general election, where 4.8 million citizens head to the polls this Sunday to elect a president Is. of the republic, senators, deputies and governors.
The main unknown, according to the polls of the last few days, is the ruling party’s candidate Santiago Peña colorado party, whether to impose on the opposition Efrain Alegre, leader of Concertación, a group of center-left parties. The most recent polls show a technical tie between the two candidates.
The opening of polling stations began at 7:00 am local time (same time in Chile), at the start of a day that is expected to be extremely hot, and although officials have not yet provided participation data, images from television channel Report long lines at polling stations.
Voting is compulsory in Paraguay, but restrictions on abstention are mild and in most cases never enforced, so in practice, there is a high degree of voluntariness in attendance at polling places.
Mutual accusations in the elections in Paraguay
Both the ruling party and the opposition have been accused of casting votes at different tables. Coloradismo even speaks of “attempts of violence in some places in the center of the country”, while the opposition assures that in one place in Yby Pytá (the interior of the country) there are armed groups linked to drug trafficking. Groups and ruling parties are blocking it. Exercise of the right to vote.
“Apparently there is a plan on the part of the (National) Concert to try to block the electoral process of voting,” Wildo Almiron, a representative of the National Republican Association (ANR), told a press conference.
At the polling place where former President Horacio Cortes voted, ABC color reporter Brian Cáceres was thrown to the ground by members of his security team when the reporter tried to ask questions of the Colorado party chair, who in late January United States authorities in the United States approved it for considering it “substantially corrupt”.
Paraguayans living abroad are also casting their votes at polling stations set up in Argentina, Brazil, the United States and Spain, where the majority of expatriate communities are concentrated.
