A former Roman Catholic bishop promising clean government filed to run for president Thursday, hoping to end 61 years of rule by the Colorado Party.Fernando Lugo registered on behalf of the left-leaning Patriotic Alliance coalition of 11 labor, union and Indian groups, becoming the last of three top candidates to formally enter the April 20 general election.
Lugo, who resigned as bishop in 2006 to prepare for his run, has campaigned for months against one-party rule in the poor South American country with a long history of political corruption.
«We are not going to steal a cent from the public treasury,» Lugo told 3,000 cheering supporters. «By standing together, united, we can change this country.
Lugo faces the Colorados' Blanca Ovelar, who hopes to become the country's first female president, joining women who now serve as presidents of Argentina and Chile.
Former army chief Lino Cesar Oviedo, a centrist with a small independent party, also recently filed as a candidate. A charismatic retired general in a country accustomed to military strongmen, Oviedo was cleared last year of a conviction for a failed 1996 coup attempt.
Paraguay has been beset by sporadic political turmoil since the 35-year right-wing dictatorship of the late Gen. Alfredo Stroessner ended in 1989.
The winner begins a five-year term Aug. 15, succeeding President Nicanor Duarte, who is barred constitutionally from seeking re-election.
Thomas J. Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington, told The Associated Press he knew of no other instance where a former bishop had run for president of a Latin American country.
«The Vatican feels that priests and bishops should be unifiers and should be above politics,» he said. «The way politics works today, if you're running for office, you're part of a political party, and elections are very partisan,» he said.
But the region has a history of priests dabbling in politics against the Vatican's wishes.
Haiti's first democratically elected leader, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was a leftist priest and advocate of liberation theology who was expelled by his conservative Salesian order for preaching class struggle.
Pope John Paul II famously admonished a Jesuit priest who served as Nicaragua's culture minister in the 1980s.
And Jesuit priest Robert Drinan represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress for 11 years until the Vatican said he should not hold the post.
He resigned.
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