One candidate is a former bishop who casts himself as a Paraguayan David fighting a "monstrous Goliath" in a bid to end 61 years of one-party rule. His rival wants to become the nation's first female president. Polls suggest that Paraguayans could vote out the only ruling party most of them have ever known on Sunday. The Colorado Party has endured through democracy and dictatorship in this poor, agrarian South American nation, and has been in power even longer than Cuba's Communist Party. Hoping to end the party's six-decade run is former Roman Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo, sometimes called "the bishop of the poor," who several polls show narrowly leading Colorado candidate Blanca Ovelar as well as former army chief Lino Cesar Oviedo.

Eight months ago, Lugo welded leftist unions, Indians and poor farmers into a coalition with Paraguay's main opposition party to form the Patriotic Alliance for Change.

Lugo, 56, then launched a charismatic campaign in which he blamed Paraguay's deep-seated economic woes on decades of corruption by elites who ruled at the expense of the poor in a country of subsistence farmers.

"Now is the hour of change! Don't be afraid!" the gray-bearded priest shouted in both Spanish and the Guarani Indian language at a recent rally, at which he quoted from the Bible and wore sandals.

Now his Patriotic Alliance for Change is mounting the most serious challenge to the Colorado Party since democratic elections returned after the country's 35-year military dictatorship ended in 1989.

At a rally outside Asuncion, he likened himself to a "Paraguayan David fighting the monstrous Goliath."

Fueling his charge is voter disenchantment with 13 percent joblessness in South America's poorest country after Bolivia. Some 43 percent of the 6.5 million Paraguayans live in poverty, and many survive on a meal a day. Thousands have fled to Spain for work.

Ovelar, a 50-year-old former education minister nominated by outgoing President Nicanor Duarte, counters that she would be a bold reformer of her own feud-riven party, modernizing the landlocked, agrarian nation.

She promises to bring a woman's sensibility to a "clearly macho country" whose sporadic political unrest has shaken its fragile democracy since 1989.

She called Lugo a "failed priest" unfaithful to the Vatican, which refuses to recognize his resignation. Lugo resigned as bishop in December 2006 to sidestep Paraguay's constitutional ban on clergy seeking office.

"If this is how he is with God, how will he be with the Paraguayan people?" she asks supporters.

Ovelar promises a more centrist government than the left-leaning women presidents elected in Argentina and Chile since 2005.

At stake in Sunday's presidential vote is the political course of a country whose single-party reign began in 1947. The Colorado Party has the longest current run of uninterrupted governance in Latin America.

Observers say Lugo is likely to have a center-left government. Lugo says he was influenced by the same liberation theology frowned upon by the Vatican. But he declares he is neither on the "left" nor the "right."

A spoiler among five minor candidates could be former army chief Lino Oviedo, an independent candidate who was jailed and then cleared last year of waging a coup attempt in 1996.

Congressional and gubernatorial seats are also at stake Sunday.

Written By BILL CORMIER

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